Rhonda Bracey: At Random

I had a bit of a break from quilting the community quilts — I’d finished one batch and hadn’t received the next, then I had a lot of work deadlines to meet and a trip to Bali. I finally got back to my Sweet Sixteen this past weekend, after about a month of no quilting!

The first quilt I pulled out of the large box of 11 in the new batch was a very dark (mostly solid black) geometric quilt. I suspect it was made with a male in mind, so I figured that feathers and flowers wouldn’t be the right way to quilt this quilt.

I thought of some sort of Navajo design motifs, but all those I could find on the internet required a LOT of marking (I’m not big on marking — I just want to quilt!). So I looked at it a different way.

I saw circles in the triangle blocks (!), so I decided to use one of Leah Day’s ‘matrix’ motifs. Out came a large bowl to mark the big circles and a lid for marking the small circles, then I free motion quilted each circle using a dark charcoal thread with a bit of a sheen (Floriani embroidery thread, 40 wt rayon, colour PF488), and using dark navy Wonderfil Invisifil (100 wt, colour IF 608) in the bobbin (the backing fabric was navy).

I used a variegated King Tut thread (colour 403 ‘Cairo’) for the rising sun motifs in the blue/grey border, and a soft green/blue rayon for the flames in the same border (Robison-Anton rayon, 40 wt, colour 2313 ‘Sprite’). The large flames in the other black areas and the large border were quilted with a black Gutermann polyester thread. I didn’t want any sort of sheen for these areas, which is why I just used a ‘standard’ thread.

Total quilting stitches: 160,000

I wasn’t sure how to quilt this quilt top. It was very busy, so I figured that an overall stitching motif would be best, instead of trying to emphasise the quilting. I let it sit for a couple of days after basting it to see if any inspiration came to me.

The FMQ Challenge for August was “jester’s hats” so I decided to practice drawing them, then quilting them on a practice piece, then quilting them on this quilt. Killing two birds with one stone!

Despite looking simple, I actually found the jester’s hats quite hard to do. For some reason, my brain just couldn’t latch on to this pattern easily. Some of them went off in directions of their own, and I got myself into a few corners that I found hard to get out of. Fortunately, this quilt is so busy in design, fabrics, and colours that I think only ‘the quilt police’ would notice where I got stuck. 😉

I used a variegated yellow/green King Tut thread (‘Nile Crocodile’ [colour 943]) in the top and a navy Invisifil thread (colour IF 608) in the bobbin to match the pretty yellow/blue floral fabric on the back.

I think this quilt top was made by the same person who made ‘bug jar‘ — but this time the jars were filled with goodies, mostly sweet goodies like jellybeans, chocolates, cookies, etc. 😉

I decided to quilt large circles in the borders and sashing, then to outline quilt each  goodie in each of the jars. I used a variety of threads, mostly rayons, to match each jar’s contents; for the aqua green circles, I used a 40wt Isacord embroidery thread (colour 5010); and I used a beige Deco-Bob thread in the bobbin.

This one was fun! I call it ‘bug jar’. Each jar has a fabric with some sort of bug on it — mosquitoes, spiders, butterflies, flies, even turtles! (yeah, I know, not a bug…), so I suspect this quilt was made for a kid.

I quilted hundreds of spider webs all over the quilt in keeping with the theme, and, to add a surprise, I used some Superior NiteLite thread to stitch two BIG spider webs over the top of all the others — at night with the lights off, these webs should glow in the dark! 😉

Thread used:

• Top: Isacord 40 wt, colour ‘Coral’ 1532
• Bobbin: Deco-Bob 80wt, grey, colour DB 103.

It rained a lot of the weekend, so guess what I did? 😉

This was a very ‘busy’ quilt top. I suspect it was made up of lots of independent, spare blocks that the maker decided to put together. As it was so busy, I decided to just use a large meandering stipple in a soft silver grey (Fil-Tec Glide thread), with a beige Deco-Bob thread in the bobbin.

I left the house and cat blocks and then outline quilted them to make them ‘pop’.

I loved quilting this Community Quilt. The colours were just gorgeous and I knew it needed special treatment and quilting that emphasised the richness of the colours and design.

I ended up using three top threads — a variegated brown Sulky rayon thread (Gutermann; colour 2120) in the centre section, the light border, and the outer border; a maroon rayon thread (Madeira; colour 1385) in the maroon border and the centres of the feathers in the black border; and a metallic gold thread (Madeira; colour Gold 6) for the large feathers in the black border. I used a maroon Deco-Bob thread (Wonderfil; colour DB245) to disappear into the rich brown batik fabric on the back.

I didn’t know how I was going to quilt it until I started, then just added designs as I went.

For the centre section, I arced from one centre diamond point to the next in the 4-patch blocks, then back again, followed by the edges, creating a ‘cathedral window’ effect with internal petals. For the setting triangles, I did half flower motifs. Then roundish bubbles for the first border in the same thread.

I quilted the next border in the maroon thread, doing a single line of feathers. These are hard to see in the photos.

The next light border I quilted with a ‘banana’ motif using the variegated brown thread. I left the gold/tan border unquilted.

For the maroon border, I did a square edged stipple following a singular wavy line down the centre of that border.

Then it was time for the wide black border. I hunted out some gold metallic thread that had always given me bother in my sewing machine. However, it went through the Sweet Sixteen really well and didn’t snap once. I deliberately started the feathers in the centre of each border and went out to the corners, instead of doing a long single set of feathers around the border. After doing the gold feathers, I put the maroon thread back in the machine and did little inner fronds inside each feather.

The outer border was quite ‘busy’, so instead of making a feature of it, I just did open headbands in it with the brown variegated Sulky thread.

This was actually two humidicrib quilts, but as they are so small (16 by 24 inches) and as they were similar tops and as I used the same quilting motif, I decided to class this as one community quilt.

Again, I used an open headband motif, with a variegated cotton thread in pale pastels on the top and a pre-wound bobbin in beige on the back. Yes, the wind was ‘fresh’ when I took these photos!

I dropped off the first 6 quilts I quilted to the WAQA community quilts organiser on Friday — and she gave me some great news! I don’t have to bind the quilts too! Yay! That means just quilting them.

So I pin basted and quilted #7 today. It was difficult to quilt as the top was off centre and the blocks were wonky and puckering and not joined very well (some wonkiness could well have been a result of fabric choices — some fabrics were thin and flimsy, while others were quite sturdy). And there wasn’t quite enough batting to fit, so I had to join another strip of batting. The puckering blocks meant that I needed to use fairly dense quilting to ‘beat it into submission’. A close large stipple was an option, but instead I decided on an open headband motif.

I used a variegated blue/green/yellow King Tut thread (from Superior; 40 wt Egyptian cotton, colour 403) on the top and a navy Invisifil thread (Wonderfil; 100 wt, colour IF 608).

Some photos below:

Another big one! And all hand appliqued too. The person who’d appliqued the leaves used the tiniest little running stitches! Such a lot of work.

The first thing was to stabilise the quilt and add emphasis to the leaves — they looked liked misshapen blobs when I took the quilt out of the bag. Then I realised they were grape leaves or similar. So my first task was to stitch the veins for all 63 leaves, using matching threads in various brands and colours and just freeform stitching them. I used  light grey Deco-Bob thread in the bobbin for the entire quilt.

Then I looked closely at the hand stitched applique work and I wasn’t 100% sure that the edges wouldn’t lift, so I used clear and smoke invisible thread to stitch down the edges — clear thread for the lighter coloured leaves, and smoke thread for the darker ones.

Once I had the leaves stabilised, the next decision was how to quilt all that ‘white space’. I decided to do an all-over leaf motif, in a thread that closely matched the calico.

Here’s the quilt in my Sweet Sixteen — I had both table extensions out and still it hung over the sides.

The finished quilt and the back:

My fifth community quilt was obviously made by the same person who made number 3. Same blocks, same fabrics, same stitching, slightly different layout. So I quilted it the same as Community Quilt 3, as the same ‘rules’ applied.