Enchanting Quilts: Improv I

Thursday, January 2, 2014

Improv I

I have never been one to work in a series but I think I might give it a try. Sometimes an absence of something give you a new prospective on it. I have been away from quilting and art in general for about two years ago now. I have been drawn to all the new "modern" trend all over the web. This is not a new thing for sure but it has gained in popularity. I actually did my first improv quilt some years ago when I was just messing with fabric. What I like so much is that there is no such thing as careful planning. For me the most important thing is color.

Here is my first Improv for the series. It does not have a name for now so it will just be Improv I for now. I got the inspiration from a piece by Kathleen Loomis on the blog: andthenwesetitonfire.blogspot.com/2012/06/piecing-very-fine-lines.html She has a very good tutorial of the technique she uses and has a gallery of her work useing this great technique. I am also very inspired by the work of Uta Lenk at justquilts.de She has some really great eye candy in her gallery.

For my first piece I decided I need to have a good contrast and what better color palate to begin with than cool colors offset by fushia! I did not have to dig too deep into the stash to come up with some chunks of fabric that seemed to play nicely together. This year by motto is if you like the fabric: cut, cut, cut! No more saving fabric for that special project as the fabric store always has more.

Not to worry about the mess as this is only about color choices and how the fabrics look together. The fushia will be the thin lines so only a little of it will show.

The next decision is really about the base. I opted not to have lines of the fushia separating these pieces. This is really just about putting together the pieces in a nice arrangement. They will be altered once the lines begin to appear.

Then a choice has to be made. Where to make that first cut and insert the strip.

Then the next line is cut. At this point I decided to sub cut just the top part and insert some strips there.

So far so good. I continue to cut and sew until the piece has enough lines. There is no right or wrong. One thing to keep in mind is that there will be some quilting and who knows maybe embellishments added so it needs to be enough but not too much with all that in mind.