Improvising

Here's a project I started working on at retreat last week.  I'd been wanting to do some improvisational piecing, and had in mind a video I'd watched on Design Matters TV where Edwina Mackinnon demonstrated her "cut and come again" technique for making a whole bunch of small pieced blocks.  A while back, I stumbled onto a bin of Hoffman solid cottons on sale, so I selected some colors for this purpose.  I don't think I've sewn with solid colors since the 1980s when I was making Amish quilts.  But what can I say -- they called to me.  A retreat day to piece while chatting with friends seemed the perfect setting for this project.

So away I went.  And I must say, I really enjoyed doing these.  It was very fun, developing each little composition in a 4.5 inch block.  No surprise -- the blocks I liked the best were usually the simplest ones.  Some of them would be great larger quilts -- maybe you'll see that in the future!

In any event, by the end of the day I'd sewn over 100 blocks and I figured that was enough.  I've been arranging and rearranging them on my design wall-- such fun possibilities -- but I liked the look of aligning the striped lines and I keep thinking about the San Andreas fault as I work on this so it will probably end up with some sort of earthquakey title!

The blocks are now sewn together, I know what I want the borders to look like, and I'll incorporate some hand-stitching in this, too.  

Considering that this is all improvising -- moving forward without a plan or mental vision of where I want it to go, this process has felt good. 

And now I wait...

I had an unexpectedly open morning, so I took the opportunity to play a bit with something I've been wanting to do.  I've been laying out masking tape on fabric ...

and I've stencilled in color using Shiva Painstiks.  This has not only been fun and relaxing -- it's also been feasible with minimal input from the left hand, which is still surprisingly sore.

I was thinking how much fun I'd have machine quilting when all of the color was added, but then I started thinking about how these paintstiks have to cure ... so I looked it up.  And they are supposed to cure for 3 to 5 days! 

Darn.  So much for an instant gratification sort of project.

Amazing what a little quilting will fix...

Remember this?  I've been quilting today.  And if I ever doubted that having an even amount of quilting on a quilt makes a difference, I sure don't now.

After I quilted in those leafy centers, I had a big bubbly, ripply mess.  I was hoping that blocking would fix it, but I knew that what this really needed was more machine quilting to make the density even.

So, today I put Pandora Radio on (have you tried it?  You plug in a few of your favorite artists and then it plays a personalized assortment of songs and artists like the ones you've picked.  It's GREAT) and I buzzed along.

It's finally all quilted.  So I just need to finish sewing on the binding and block it and it'll be DONE!

Check back for a blog giveaway -- I'm giving away this lovely Charmed Circles quilt pattern (because having done this once, I'm never gonna do this again.  :-)

Why am I doing this, again?

Some time ago (a year ago, maybe?) I started this "Charmed Circles" quilt.  I'm not even sure why.  Well, really, I do know... my friend Nancy made it and showed it at retreat and I really loved the modern wedding-ringish thing, and I wanted to make something in the aqua/brown palette.  So I ordered the pattern and away I went.  I had a bit of a struggle with the machine quilting concepts, so I thought I'd share my process with you.

I spent one quilt retreat piecing it all together (which, with all those curved seams and corners meeting up, wasn't QUITE as simple as I thought it'd be, but it wasn't bad).  And I had this plan for how to quilt it.

(Ignore the rumply part. I am.  :-)  )  I had some great fabric for the back.  I stitched around all of the arcs.  I thought I'd leave the seed shapes plain (or maybe stitch the strips within them) and then, for the in between pointy-squares, I planned to do a loose sort of stitching, from the back, to follow the pattern of the back fabric.  Wonderful thought, yes?  But it looked dreadful.  Tight and too much quilting and just messy.  I concluded that after sewing four of those squares.  So I ripped and ripped.  Ugh.

And then it sat while I pondered what to do.  Finally, I spent a quiet half hour at Starbucks one afternoon between errands, and I doodled possibilities.  I'm not big on marking quilts and following lines, so I knew I wanted something I could free-motion and have fun with.

I wasn't kidding when I said I doodled.  And I doodled some more.

I started liking the leaf shape.  And to make it a little clearer, I put some clear vinyl down on top of the actual quilt top, and used a dry-erase marker to test out possibilities:

And then I decided to go for it:

I can hardly wait until I'm done with this thing. (And, oh goodie, bias binding and scalloped edges are what are still to come!) I know I will like it again some day but for now I'm just tired of the darn thing! 

By the way, at present it's sort of rumply but I have confidence that blocking it will even it all out.  Really, it's amazing what blocking will fix.  Trust me.

Only 7 more squares to quilt...