Tag Archives: planned improv

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This summer I started co-hosting the Quilts Unscripted Bee with a group of 10 quilters. It is an improv quilt bee and every month the host for the month gives us a prompt. These can vary greatly. There might be a limited palette. The prompt might be about a feeling, or a style, or creating something representational.

Sarah Ruiz kicked off our first month in June with a really fun one. She gave us a limited color palette and asked us to use solids. Then she had a sign up for each person to pick some letters of the alphabet so she would end up with one of every letter to make an improv alphabet quilt, with a bit of a ransom note feel. Sarah also provided us with a Pinterest board with many alphabet styles to inspire us. She asked that our letters each have a different style.

I wasn't fast enough to get Q in the signup and ended up picking G, U and Y.

I made my U first, making a couple improv Drunkard's Path blocks to use as the curves.

I implemented my Scrappy Slab technique in building my Y.

And I saved the G for last, probably because I found it most intimidating. I'd been thinking about the ransom note style and knew I wanted to make one letter that looked like it was cut out of a piece of paper, hence the border around the G. I opted for a lower case G so there would be fewer curves to deal with and chose a Drunkard's Path unit for the top of the G. In fact, it was the inner piece remnant from the U above.

You can see more of our bee's blocks on Instagram at #quiltsunscriptedbee. I recently shared my hammock and book blocks. And I have one more month of blocks to catch up on that I'll write about soon.

Thanks for visiting!

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My passion is planned improv piecing. I enjoy giving myself a set of rules to follow (or break!) as create.

While demoing my technique in my All About Angles classes, I always cut up some fabric to show how I create my starting pieces. Sometimes these are part of a work in progress, but sometimes I just start with a new pile of fabric I'm excited to work with. In this case it was the latter. I started with five Alison Glass Kaleidoscope solids: Tomato, Sunflower, Raisin, Cherry, Goldenrod.

I was drawn to this autumn palette. As I put together my improv piecing, I was reminded of the changing colors of the Fall season. I find labeling the selvage edge of my solid fabrics with a sharpie to be a helpful way to remember which color is which. In this case "AG" is for Alison Glass.

I opted for a variety of weights and colors of thread for walking foot quilting echoing my piecing lines, Aurifil 12wt Paprika (#2270), 40wt Brass (#2975), 50wt Yellow (#2135), and 12wt Burgundy (#1103).

I finished the quilt with a faced binding and a mini sleeve. (Label coming soon!)

Fractured is 12" x 12". It is my first SAQA donation piece, for this year's SAQA Benefit Auction, which will take place September 10 through October 3. Be sure you are subscribed to my newsletter if you'd like to be reminded of the auction in September. If you'd like to have me visit your guild or group to teach my All About Angles piecing technique (or one of my other workshops), please send your program chair to my Teaching page.

Thanks for visiting!

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I've been teaching All About Angles workshops since 2019. This project is actually the first quilt top that I pieced for myself in this style, way back before that time. I had selected the color palette, because these sunset colors called out to me and the pile of fabric hung out together on my shelf for quite some time before I cut into it to create this small quilt top.

Like many quilters, I've been wanting to finish up some of my WIPs. I participated in a 100 Day Project January 30 - May 10, free motion quilting for at least fifteen minutes a day. I prioritized finishing up quilt tops, including this one. I spent 33 days quilting this 24" x 19" quilt, meaning I spent well over 8 hours quilting it. I really enjoyed the process since I worked a bit at a time and wasn't hurrying to meet a deadline. This is important for me, because I am generally a procrastinator who is super motivated by a deadline, which can really limit the possibilities for the late stages of making a quilt. Can anyone relate?

I started by extending the diagonal lines from the piecing as well as reflecting them, continuing until I had divided the quilt into many areas of a variety of sizes. This step could have been done with a walking foot though I chose to free motion these lines. I marked my lines with a chalk pencil or disappearing marker.

Then I really had fun, choosing a different motif for each section, I started by echo quilting within the section before filling it in with the chosen motif. These motifs came from my usual FMQ toolbox as well as inspiration from Step-by-Step Texture Quilting by Christina Cameli (my newest quilt book) and The Ultimate Guide to Machine Quilting by Angela Walters and Christina Watson (affiliate links). Everything is quilted in 50wt Aurifil: Magenta (#2535), Red Orange (#2245), Bright Orange (#1133), and Medium Purple (#2545).

Pin for reference. Some of my motifs were very small patterns.

Sunset All About Angles was finished with a faced binding, which was a choice to further emphasize the quilting as the star.

My All About Angles class is available to guilds on Zoom. I teach a set of rules to create improv units that use the same angle, with no math or special tools. There are so many ways to utilize these units in a final composition. Please send your guild program chair to my teaching page for all the info. Thanks!

 

I've linked up to May's Favorite Finish linkup with Cheryl at Meadow Mist Designs.