Tag Archives: planned improv

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Last week I traveled down to Tehachapi for a visit to the Tehachapi Mountain Quilters. I met the program chairs from the group last April at the SCCQG Meet the Teachers event.

After a long drive, I rolled into town on Sunday evening, ready to join them Monday morning for their guild meeting. My new Island Batik scarf made it's debut since it was the perfect match the my top. I couldn't resist stopping for a quick photo of the beautiful mountain view on my way to the meeting.

I shared my My Quilting Journey lecture with a large pile of my quilts, spanning from my first quilt back in 2002 (I think) to many of my recent Planned Improv and other quilts. This lecture is show and tell of around 25 quilts, sharing my tips and tricks along the way. The quilts you can see hanging are some of my recent Planned Improv pieces: Fandangle Scrappy Squares, Modern Batik, Pantone Ultra Violet All About Angles, and Bold and Brave.

Following the guild meeting I had lunch with a group of the women from the guild and then visited Yvonne. I ended my day with some delicious chicken pasta from Jake's, which was walking distance from my hotel.

On Tuesday I taught Planned Improv: Scrappy Squares. It's so fun how versatile Planned Improv is. Anna work in progress and Angie's first finished slab are shown above. During the workshop I had students making baby quilts, wall quilts, table toppers, and placemats. Part of my Planned Improv workshops is talking about how to iterate on a design and in order to build another unit that looks like it belongs with the first. This is applicable when creating larger sized quilts with multiple slabs, like my Greenery quilt, as well as working in a series to create a set of placemats that aren't identical, but do go together.

Gina used a variety of blue Grunge fabric with soft greys in her background. They she chopped up her finished slab and rearranged the quadrants to create a different composition.

I had a lovely day with this great group of women who all finished one or more slabs. A great big thanks to all of the Tehachapi Mountain Quilters for having me, and to Beve and Nancy, the current program chairs, who took care of me while I was there.

Would you like to have me visit your guild to teach? Point your guild program chair to my teaching page for details about the lectures and workshops I'm currently offering. Check my teaching schedule to see if I'll be in your area.

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Last Sunday was the beginning of season 10 of Project QUILTING, a series of one-week quilt challenges. I've participated for the past two years and this year I'm a sponsor. The theme for this week's challenge is Hope Springs Eternal. Well... I was out of town for the first 4 days of the one week challenge, and then I had to spend Thursday and Friday making serious progress on a quilt deadline that I'll be posting on my blog tonight. This means I didn't even have time to think too much about this challenge until yesterday.

I had a hard time with this theme. In the end, with 14 hours until the deadline (including overnight... and I needed to sleep) I had hope I could crank out a small quilt. How's that for hope springing eternal? My initial goal was a mug rug, then I decided on placemat sized, and in the end I trimmed it to 18.5" x 18.5". I'll be linking up with less than 15 minutes to spare.

I used a lovely piece of hand dyed fabric from my friend Mel Beach and my Planned Improv: All About Angles technique. After demoing my technique on Wednesday (7 times!) I'm excited to work on some All About Angles projects.

I used two sizes of Aurifil Light Leaf Green (#1147) for this quilt. It was pieced and bound with Aurifil 50wt and quilted with Auriful 80wt. I hadn't used 80wt and really love the fine line it creates. It's certainly quilting that's all about the texture and not the color. I chose a fast motif from my recent class with Christa Watson. It's way fancier than a basic meander, but not much more difficult.

Here's the basic breakdown of how I made the quilt start to finish in under 14 hours.

Saturday
8pm - pull fabric
8:50pm - cut fabric
9:07pm - start sewing
10:50pm - bedtime

Sunday
5:45am - back at the machine
6:20am - finished quilt top 
7am - quilting begins
7:45am - done quilting
8:40 - binding going on
9:25am - photos, then blog post
9:48am - linkup

Congratulations to everyone who finished the challenge! View them all at the Project QUILTING 10.1 linkup. Voting is open, so click over to check out the 124 submissions and vote for your 10 favorites.

 

I've linked up to Needle and Thread Thursday.

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The Curves Mini Quilts challenge for Curated Quilts ends today. I love quilt challenges for a variety of reasons. The small size of a mini quilt is a great way to play with a new or different technique. When the Curves challenge was announced I loved the palette (though I totally missed that white was in the list) and knew that I would do something with gentle improv curves.

I was out of town for 9 days in December without my sewing machine, so I packed along my fabric, rotary cutter, and small cutting mat. This allowed me to work in my hotel room to prep all my pieces for the mini quilt.

When I returned home I needed to finish up one last December project before I could get to work on this project beginning January 1st. But since my pieces were all cut and organized, the units went together quickly.

I trimmed them down to 4-inch squares.

I opted to add in the white from the palette with my echo walking foot quilting. The 10.5" x 10.5" quilt was finished with a faced binding.

 

I'm linking up to the Curated Quilts Curves Mini Quilt Challenge call for entries and Michelle's Beauties Pageant, and Wendy's Peacock Party, and TGIFF with Anja. There are so many other beautiful submissions. Congratulations to everyone who participated.