A quilt group I am in decided to have a monthly 10″ block swap. Every month there would a theme and we would bring twelve 10″ squares to swap. At first I was like, OOh1 New fabric! But then, I have no control over this fabric. What am I going to do with only twelve 10″ squares? Insert the 2016 Improv Project. I decided I would make a 36″ quilt with every month’s fabric supply, practicing improv. I love curves and decided for this first batch to try improv curves with the fabrics.
I randomly selected three blocks and created stacks. I cut each stack with two improv curves. Then swapped pieces and sewed back together. I admit I had a harder time sewing what would be close to a ‘drunkards’ shape than I did the long curving ones. I started off without pinning, going for improv here. But ended up losing a good inch of the square. Started pinning and they were better, but still difficult. I found when I was mixing the batik with the cotton, those drunkard shapes did not come out well. But when it was cotton to cotton, they were not too bad.
I took my stack of 12 new blocks and trimmed down to 8″. Now arrangement time! This was fun, I had no real intention when I put them on the wall. Then I started looking at how the blocks could bleed together with the prints and the colors. I started seeing ‘rivers’ and attempted to arrange so the blocks formed rivers connecting. This made the white and other prints turn into peninsulas. I was pretty happy with this, but the top was pretty small once I sewed the blocks together. I knew it needed borders but I didn’t want to center this top. I measured out sizes I would need and split the differences in a 2/3 split. Then I had an awesome idea to use up the one print that I had left. Let it bleed into the border, and break the border color. I was first disappointed that the split ended up being directly in the middle of the quilt, but looking at the color change I think the placement works well. It’s just enough of a shift you don’t notice the border color change until the second glance.