Improvisational Journey

The more I looked at modern quilts, the more I admired improvised pieces. So bold and exciting, so asymmetrical, so full of wonder. I began examining technique and color choices, unleashed my inner Irene Roderick (and Cindy Grisdela, and Carol Lyles Shaw, and Sheila Frampton Cooper), and finally dived right in.

*My cutting table during improv piecing fury. Hat tip to Irene, of course.*

The Professional Art Quilters Alliance - South (PAQA) inspired me to toss out the anguish and just start trying offbeat stuff for the fun of it. The first piece I made was from scraps I had laying around - I was a bit skeptical I could produce anything worth saving.

I began making striped lengths because I like the look and they seemed pretty flexible. Then I started shaping cut pieces into vague ovals and building a picture. I honestly had no idea where I was going with it, but I added and subtracted, snipped and clipped. Wow! It was fun and so easy! I always resented sticking to strict 1/4" seams and cutting precisely, fussing about measurements and rulers. Making it up as I go along and sewing pieces together to make shapes instead of adhering to someone else's pattern was utterly liberating! I called it Pods.

I began sewing as a child by making my own clothes, so I was used to 5/8" seams, easing and tucking, cutting big and trimming back. Very inherently improvisational.

Making Pods, I learned a few techniques along the way. Matching curves can be tricky, but I never stress over them. I just cut, trim, ease, make it work.

Trimming seams after sewing would be smart, to reduce bulk and keep dark fabric seam allowances from showing through light fabrics. If only I could stick to that! I assemble my improv pieces so furiously that I neglect the trimming part and keep finding "shadows" after the fact. Sigh.

I tinkered around with a few experiments that didn't lead to anything exciting. The next improv piece I really liked was constructed with a series of monotone vertical strips, quilted with various colored threads, interspersed with a few abstracted wildflowers and stems. My cutting table was a tangle of greens and some peachy and mauve fabrics as I slashed and sewed Day Lilies.

Working in the zone, piecing intuitively, dancing around the cutting table with jazz playing in the background, it seemed to fall together by itself. When Day Lilies was hanging in a PAQA exhibit, some visitors stopped me and quizzed me for 10 minutes about my choices; I finally had to admit to them it was totally unplanned, directly from the heart.

Now I was hooked. For my next improv piece, I started with a huge stash pull and only a vague idea of how to construct it - an overall movement and conceptual color consolidation. This one would be larger, have sections of a universe that echoed each other somehow. I liked the idea of Einstein's "spooky action at a distance," in which atoms could interact even if they were a universe apart. I would call it Attraction At A Distance.

I also liked making long skinny strips. So, I started constructing long skinny strips, pulled some striped fabric and lots of solids, playing around with "ladders" and "slabs" and chunks of squarish-rectangular shapes. I threw them up on the design wall and spent weeks rearranging them and filling in spots. When it clicked, I began sewing them all together and squared it off with large solid areas in the corners to give it shape.

I was delighted to see it evolve so coherently, with a pleasing movement from one section to another. The color families called to each other across the boundaries. I added a pieced binding to help define the color "universes." Every time I look at it now, it makes me smile.

Next, I rushed into another improv piece in answer to a challenge - so, some restrictions, but not too onerous. It had to incorporate a traditional block as a basis and reflect the theme of Community.

For a long time I had been contemplating making a quilt that depicted a village of little houses, maybe on a hillside, rolling down to the sea. OK, so I'll use that idea, starting with the traditional House block, and call it My Village.

I imagined a focus on a few prominent houses in the lower center, surrounded by lots of white negative space. As I made house pieces of varying sizes, a few had deeply saturated colors and then they faded to almost white. A few straggly skinny roads found their way into the design too.

To make the background, I sewed together large chunks of low volume whites and creams, then arbitrarily sliced them into smaller rectangles and stitched them back together. I mixed in various shades of white and cream, some solids and some subtly patterned.

The final quilt turned out a lot bigger than I planned, and I probably would have fussed with it a lot longer, but I was on a QuiltCon deadline (argh! another restriction!). So, I had to call it done and bind it, two days before the submission date.

I've noticed that people consistently try to discern faces and images in abstract works; it's just our nature, I guess. It's difficult for me to leave abstraction behind and make a piece that evokes something from real life. I struggle with how realistic to make it, and whether a viewer will imagine a real face or animal or known object. Improvisational work seems so natural to me because it's pure abstraction. Dreams left undefined.

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