Rhonda Bracey: At Random

This was a pretty quilt! I loved the mix of colours — soft blues, aquas, and creams. And with the type of batting used, it was quite ‘fluffy’ too. So I knew I’d have to either use a design to emphasise the fluffiness, or something to subdue it. I opted for both 😉

In one set of the diamonds I quilted big bubbles/pebbles, and in the other I stitched the diagonal pieces down with up/down stitching about 1/4″ apart (no I didn’t use a ruler and didn’t measure or mark it — just let it flow). That dense stitching really puffed up the centre squares, so I did a spiral in them. I repeated that in the setting triangles.

For the borders, I left the cream border, did the up/down stitching in the small blue border, and some BIG bubbles/pebbles in the wide border.

I quite like how it turned out, and was impressed with the ‘texture’ the quilting created on the back.

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Back:

Threads used:

• Top: Robison-Anton ‘Maize’ (rayon, 40 wt, colour #2264
• Bottom: Bobbinfil (white)

This was an odd quilt. Not something I would have made, but I don’t get a choice in the quilts I get given to quilt 😉 And they aren’t for me anyway.

How to quilt it? I decided to start with the centre diamonds, and stitched a wavy matrix/cross-hatch in each. Then I did an open headband motif for the rest of the top, and some small clam shells in the border (using my Handi Quilter 2″ clam shell ruler).

I used the same light cream/yellow thread for all the stitching on the main top, with a variegated pink/red in the border.

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Back:

Threads used

• Top: Main top: Robison-Anton ‘Maize’ (40 wt, rayon, colour #2264); Border: Superior King Tut ‘Red Sea’ (cotton, 40 wt, colour #926)
• Bottom: Bobbinfil (white)

For one of the first Community Quilts I ever quilted, I actually quilted the back, following the outlines of the flower pattern in the fabric (see https://rhondabracey.com/2012/06/26/community-quilts-1-and-2/). And so for this one. The backing fabric was quite pretty and had some lovely big flowers on it, so I decided to turn it over, put the thread I would normally have had in the top into the bobbin, and put the thread for the back into the top.

By doing that, I was able to use a 12 wt cotton thread that I had — I’ve tried it through the needle and it’s flaky at best, so putting it in the bobbin was a great idea… except that this smallish quilt took about 6 bobbins as so little of the 12 wt thread could be wound on before filling the bobbin. No matter.

I outlined stitched the flowers on the back and the pattern that created came through onto the top. As the top’s fabrics were very busy, you can’t really see the quilting motif, but you can definitely feel the texture.

If this quilt looks similar to the others I’ve done recently, that’s ‘cos it is. I was given a batch of quilts that had used the same block designs and sizes, though all were done in different fabrics, thus creating different effects.

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This is the back — I followed the outlines of the flowers with the King Tut thread:

And this is how it looks on the front, with the thick bobbin thread as the ‘top’ thread:

Threads used

• Top: Superior King Tut ‘Red Sea’ (cotton, 40 wt, colour #926)
• Bottom: Wonderfil Fruitti (Egyptian cotton, 12 wt, colour FT 12)

This quilt was made from the same block pattern as the previous one.

First, I stitched in the ditch around the main diamond blocks, then decided to do a floral style open headband motif for quilting the main design.

For the borders I just did some large clam shells using one of my Handi Quilter rulers, then added a single flame motif between each one to add a bit of interest. I stayed with the deep pink variegated thread throughout and quite liked the effect of the pink on the deep green background.

(Click on a photo to view it larger)

Back:

Threads used

• Top: Superior King Tut ‘Red Sea’ (cotton, 40 wt, colour #926)
• Bottom: Wonderfil Deco Bob in a soft pink (80 wt, colour DB 205)

This was a pretty little quilt, but oh, those joins! Some were OK and nice a flat shwoing that the quilt maker had butted them up correctly, but the others weren’t, meaning that some 8+ layers of fabric were jammed into one spot. I had to go around them to avoid breaking my needle and damaging my machine.

One of the fabrics in the centre and the outside border fabric was a muted poinsettia, so I used that as the inspiration for the pointed flower motifs in each block. The second border fabric was a nice muted check, so I stitched along its lines and then stitch cathedral/castle window shapes into the big border to hold it down.

I used one of my favourite threads — ‘Driftwood’ (a Fil-Tec Harmony thread) — which has a lovely variegated mix of grey, tan, beige, and other lovely colours.

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This join was nice and flat

This join was just a mess of fabric all bunched in together

Back:

Threads used

• Top: Fil-Tec Harmony ‘Driftwood’ (cotton, 40 wt, colour #14069)
• Bottom: Wonderfil Deco Bob in a soft pink (80 wt, colour DB 205)

Driftwood thread

Another pinkish quilt — this time of hearts.

I stitched in the ditch around each heart and the sashing borders, then did a continuous line meandering hearts and loops motif in the centre of the quilt, echo stitching  around each heart as I came to it.

For the border, I free stitched (no markings, no rulers/templates) a heart in each corner and half way along each side, then just did a large simple meandering stipple between these hearts.

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Back:

Threads used

• Top: Robison-Anton (rayon, 40 wt, colour – soft pink (the label has fallen off!))
• Bottom: Wonderfil Deco Bob in a soft pink (80 wt, colour DB 205)

This was a pretty pink floral quilt! So there really wasn’t much to think about as far as thread colours and design motif went — pink for the thread, and fulsome feathers for the blocks 😉

I didn’t quilt the sashing strips to add a bit of ‘puff’ to the texture of the quilt, and only outlined the pink and purple flowers in the border fabric, just to hold them down. Prior to quilting, I ditch-stitched around all the pink sashing and border strips.

The back:

Threads used

• Top: Robison-Anton (rayon, 40 wt, colour – soft pink (the label has fallen off!))
• Bottom: Wonderfil Deco Bob in a soft pink (80 wt, colour DB 205)

This was a BIG quilt — 85 x 65 inches according to the slip of paper that came with it. And it wasn’t very inspiring as far as colours or pattern go (at least, not in MY eyes). I suspect that this quilt will go to an adult male at one of the homeless shelters or transitioning into housing. The centres seems to be made of cotton shirting fabrics, or quilting fabrics that looked like shirt fabrics used for male shirts.

How to liven it up with quilting, while not making it ‘girly’ with loopy feathers or flowers and the like?

After stitching around each on the four blocks and their centres, I decided to focus on the negative space of this quilt. To make the centres ‘pop’, I quilted fairly heavily in the light grey background, using a spiral swirl (a la Angela Walters — see this blog post for my first efforts at this motif: https://rhondabracey.com/2013/10/14/community-quilt-115/). I really like how the swirls seem to ‘overlap’ each other even though they don’t; it’s actually quite easy to do — it just looks complicated 😉

I kept the same motif for all the light grey — centres and outer setting triangles, as well as the centre block between the red strips — so that the centres appeared to float on top. I just stitched the centres with straight lines 1/2 inch from the seams (using my Line Tamer ruler), and didn’t worry about crossing lines. I think the crossed lines add extra geometric effect.

For the red bits, I thought about doing another design, but then decided it would be overkill as I already had in mind what I wanted to do for the dark grey borders. So using the same light grey thread I used for the light grey sections, I stitched straight lines 1/2 inch in from each seam line in the red, than another 1/4 inch line echoing the first lines. To add a bit of interest, I also crossed those lines with a perpendicular line 1/2 inch from the perpendicular seam line, and extended the lines out into the dark grey border (like racing stripes!).

For the border, I wanted to try something other than matching the thread colour to the fabric, so I chose a red thread the same colour as the red strips and then stitched bubbles/pebbles all over the grey border, leaving the racing stripes empty of any further stitching.

I quite like how it turned out and how I turned this reasonably plain quilt into something with some life.

I took about 8 hours to quilt this quilt.

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Little thread clumps on the back of the quilt:

A couple of final comments:

• The Floriani threads I used shredded a bit. Not enough to stop but enough to catch underneath and leave a bit of a clump on the back. By the time I realised, I’d stitched well past those areas and I wasn’t going to go back and restitch them! This is NOT a quilt for a competition or for display — it’s to be loved and will be wrapped around someone to keep them warm. I don’t think a few little clumpy threads on the back will bother the recipient. (The first Floriani thread I used in the light grey areas shredded quite a bit and I had to stop to rethread the needle when the thread snapped or shredded up the needle — enough to make me switch to a Fil-Tec Glide thread for the other three blocks. I think this shredding was related to the structure of the light grey Floriani thread — it seemed to have a slightly metallic sheen. The red Floriani thread I used was much better, though it did shred a bit but nowhere near as much as the light grey Floriani thread.)
• I think the reason the thread shredded a bit was two-fold: The make of thread, but also a bit of sticky residue on the needle. This quilt had been spray basted by those putting together these quilts for me, and while that spray basting was fantastic to work with as the quilt didn’t need to be stablised or pin basted, the stickiness did coat needle a tad. That said, there was only a *small* bit of gluey residue caught in the front groove on the needle, which I removed with the point of a pin. That residue could well have contributed to thread shredding. Considering the size of the quilt and the number of stitches I stitched, it was a small price to pay for the convenience of not having to baste this quilt.

Threads used:

• Top: Floriani light grey embroidery thread (40 wt, rayon, colour PF484) — I only used this in one block, and I then used Fil-Tec Glide (40 wt, trilobal polyester, colour 10CG3) for the rest of the light grey blocks; Floriani red embroidery thread (40 wt, rayon, colour PF188)
• Bottom: Wonderfil Deco Bob in a light grey (80 wt, colour DB 103); Wonderfil Invisifil in red (100 wt, colour IF 202)

This pretty little quilt had some big snowball blocks of plain beige. How to quilt it to show off the snowball blocks but without detracting from the design created by the small squares and setting triangles?

First, I stabilised it by stitching long straight lines along the edges of the snowballs and continuing them to the next one. And I decided that that was all the busy little squares needed.

Now, how to quilt the beige snowballs? I decided on feathers, but stitching feathers in an octagonal shape isn’t easy, so I had to devise a way to do so that showed the feathers off and that didn’t create massively large and odd-shaped feathers. I’ve written a tutorial (with pictures) on how I feathered these octagonal shapes — it’s really quite easy once you get the basic structure of the spines done.

I used a variegated beige, yellow, soft green, light tan thread for all the stitching.

(Click on a photo to view it larger.)

Threads used:

• Top: Fil-Tec Affinity ‘Wheat’ (40 wt, trilobal polyester, colour #60300)
• Bottom: Wonderfil Deco Bob (80 wt, colour DB 414)

How to quilt this very geometric blue and red quilt? Circles! Well, spirals/swirls a la Angela Walters, as seen on her Craftsy class on machine quilting negative space.

I used a red, blue, purple, and cream variegated thread for all the top stitching. When I checked online for the name of the thread colour in the Superior Rainbows collection, I found that #814 (the label on this thread and another spool of it I had) didn’t match the colour of the thread I used, so I suspect that I was using old stock with a number that’s now used for a different colour.

I really liked how the circular elements juxtaposed the rectangles and squares used in the quilt.

In the border, I stitched some ‘sort of’ flames (or petals), with an inner flame/petal and an outer one, and then echoed all round. I used the same thread in the border as I used for the main part of the quilt.

And yes, in case you were wondering, I stitched all those swirls ‘freehand’ — no rulers, no marking.

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This is the thread I used — it was labelled #814 and is from the Superior Rainbows range:

This is what the current catalog has as #814 in Superior Rainbows thread — they are QUITE different colours:

Threads used:

• Top: Superior Rainbows (40 wt, trilobal polyester, colour #814 — NOTE: this is NOT the same thread in the current Rainbows catalog under that number. The closest I could find was #823, though that’s still not the same colour as the thread I used that was labelled #814)
• Bottom: Bobbinfil (white)