Rhonda Bracey: At Random

Another ‘eye spy’ quilt, with lots of busy-ness going on in the fabric colours and patterns.

How to quilt it? Well, an all-over motif was the logical choice, in a thread colour (dark purple) that blended. I did what I’m calling a ‘Lady Liberty’ motif — start with an arc, then come back over the arc with upside-down V-shaped spikes, start the next arc, repeat…

You should be able to see what I mean by looking closely at the centre photo and the back.

(Click on a photo to view it larger)

Back”

Threads used:

• Top: Madeira (rayon, 40 wt, colour #1112 [dark purple])
• Bottom: Fil-Tec Magna Glide pre-wound bobbin (lead gray)

This pretty pastel quilt had lots of conflicting motifs — ragged circles, embroidered cupcakes in squares, and a variety of colours.

How to quilt it?

1. Using a pastel variegated thread, I stitched in the ditch around all the blocks, including the inner squares of the cupcake blocks and around each cupcake.
2. Next were the circles — I echo stitched in between the existing spirals, then flowed off the spiral motif into a large meander around the circles.
3. I echo quilted the cupcakes, then did a heart/leaf motif in the surrounding strips.
4. With a soft green thread, I stitched a straight line in the border around the entire quilt, 1/2 inch from the border’s seam.
5. Finally, I used one of my Handi Quilt scallop/shell rulers and stitched the borders n that same green thread. I just did the echo quilting around the scallops free hand (no ruler or marking). I still haven’t figured out how to do corners with these rulers! Even if you mark the centres and work out how many half circles you need, the rulers still slip and go off-kilter <grrr>. So only one of the corners in the borders looks even vaguely right.

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Back:

Threads used:

• Top: Silco (colour #SCM03 [variegated pastel]); Madeira (rayon, 40 wt, colour 1047 [soft green in border])
• Bottom: Fil-Tec Magna Glide Classic pre-wound bobbin (white)

Even though I’m not really a fan of pink, I quite liked this flying geese quilt. But how to quilt it?

I decided to go simple by stitching in the ditch around all the geese and their panels, and then stitching a border line about 1/2 an inch from each panel. And that was it. I could’ve done much more, but to be honest I though that what I’d done was enough to enhance the quilt. (BTW, I started using my Line Tamer ruler for stitching around each of the geese, but that took too long, so I just did it without the ruler for five of the panels — the centre photo below shows my freehand ‘straight’ lines without the ruler; however, I did use the ruler for the echo stitching around each panel.)

Surprisingly, the thread I used wasn’t pink but was a variegated thread of yellows and purples! It blended in well.

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Threads used:

• Top: Wonderfil Mirage (30 wt, rayon?, colour SD 32)
• Bottom: Fil-Tec Magna Glide Classic pre-wound bobbin (white)

This ‘eye spy’ quilt was SO busy with all those fabrics and colours that the simplest thing to do was a big meandering stipple! No stitch in the ditch at all — I just started from about the centre and worked my way out and around until it was all done.

I used a variegated thread in multiple shades of purple and it worked well, I thought.

(Click on a photo to view it larger)

Threads used:

• Top: Fil-Tec Harmony ‘Violets’ (40 wt, variegated cotton, colour 14072)
• Bottom: Fil-Tec Magna Glide Classic pre-wound bobbin (lead gray)

I started by stitching in the ditch along all the seams in this quilt. Then to make the colours pop, I stitched ‘wonky’ straight lines in the black bars and a sort of squared off spiral in the large and small on-point squares.

For the border, I did a squared off open headband motif.

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Threads used:

• Top: Fil-Tec Glide ‘Black’ (40wt trilobal polyester, colour 11001)
• Bottom: Fil-Tec Magna Glide Classic pre-wound bobbin (black)

This ‘Chinese coin’ quilt just called out for some straight ‘modern-style’ stitching across it, so that’s what I did after first stitching in the ditch around each of the dark borders. My Line Tamer ruler got a decent workout on this quilt!

I liked the final effect of the dark burgundy thread on the lighter fabrics.

(Click on a photo to view it larger)

Threads used:

• Top: Robison-Anton (rayon, 40 wt, maroon/burgundy colour of some sort)
• Bottom: Fil-Tec Magna Glide Classic pre-wound bobbin (lead gray)

This quilt just didn’t ‘sing’ to me and I took ages trying to figure out how to quilt it. It sat on the back of a sofa for a couple of weeks first, with me hoping to get inspired every time I passed it. It wasn’t to be…

I knew I’d have to stitch in the ditch around all the scrap fabric squares, so I started with that. The empty white spaces were then quite puffy, so I did a simple point-to-point star effect, but still the middles were too puffy, so I did an eight-pointed star inside each one of the big white spaces.

Not my favorite quilt to quilt, and it was BIG too.

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Threads used:

• Top: Mettler Metrosene Plus (polyester, colour 0781)
• Bottom: Fil-Tec Magna Glide Classic pre-wound bobbin (white)

This was a BIG quilt, all in a striking arrangement of pretty batiks. The orange squares really set off the blue/green/aqua batiks, so a neon orange became my thread colour choice for the quilting.

As this quilt pattern was so geometric, I decided to do a squared off stipple all over the quilt. Unlike other types of stippling, this one requires you to cross lines 😉

And if you look closely, you’ll see my lines aren’t perfectly straight — and that’s OK. The overall look is of rectangles and squares, even though I suspect there’s not a perfectly straight line anywhere on the quilt. If I’d wanted perfectly straight lines, I’d have used a ruler, but that would’ve added about 10 hours to this quilt.

As it was I had a few issues with the Glide thread — the first issues I’ve ever had with Glide. For some reason, the top thread was very tight at times and snapped. I couldn’t figure it out, but it wasn’t enough for me to abandon the thread and go with something else. It’s possible the thread and the batik fabric didn’t play nice together, and it may not have been the thread alone (I’ve used this thread spool on other quilts without a problem).

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Threads used:

• Top: Fil-Tec Glide ‘Neon Orange’ (40 wt , trilobal polyester, colour 90811)
• Bottom: Fil-Tec Magna Glide Classic pre-wound (white)

This smallish quilt took ages to quilt, as I stitched in the ditch around EVERY coloured square and the borders. Once I’d done that, I stitched various largish motifs inside each large on-point square, then did a simple meandering stipple  in the white space and in the border.

Just some simple stuff.

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Threads used:

• Top: Robison-Anton (40 wt rayon? maroon/burgundy for the stitch in the ditch, and ‘Old Gold’ for the stippled border); Fil-Tec Glide for the white space stipple (40 wt trilobal polyester, ‘Cream’ colour 20001)
• Bottom: Magna Glide Classic pre-wound (Lead Gray)

I loved the colours of this quilt! The aqua and black and white were so fresh and crisp, and set off perfectly by the plain black backing fabric.

With the colours and the wavy blocks, my first thought was to quilt it with parallel lines (with curved ends) emulating water, then I thought perhaps large bubbles (as in breaking waves), but decided on large spirals to emulate waves and water turbulence as I was on a deadline to finish this one and needed to quilt it with something that was big and that covered a lot of area fairly quickly.

It was a big quilt, so I used my bungee cord system to reduce drag and the weight of the quilt when moving it under the needle.

It took about 2 hours to stitch in the ditch around each block first, then about another 2 hours to do the spirals.

(Click on a photo to view it larger)

Threads used:

• Top: Fil-Tec Glide ‘Mint’ (40 wt, trilobal polyester, colour #60345)
• Bottom: Fil-Tec Magna Glide pre-wound bobbin (black)
• Needle: Size 18