Tag Archives: scrappy slab

• 2 Comments

•

In April, Isabelle asked us to make confetti inspired pieces for her. She gave us tons of flexibility in what we made for her. "Please create blocks that are abstract, and feature small pieces (1”-ish) within the design. The percentage of small piecing that makes up the block is less important than the impact of the small pieces used in the overall design of the block. Negative space, strip piecing, curved piecing, geometric design – anything goes."

 

I pulled out my smallest solid scraps, including some pieced bits. Do you see the legs from my "watch me grow" block for Carole? I just started pairing them up with other pieces that had similar lengths.

Then I chain pieced and repeated the process. At this point, I looked for fun combinations and let the fabric inspire me.

In this set, I focused on a limited palette and made small improv 4-patch units then joined them all with the same dark purple fabric.

The finished piece is about 10" x 8" (and not rectangular).

In this section (about 5" x 7") I focused on the pattern in the geometry as I pieced it.

And in this section (about 5" x 7") I used additional teal "negative space" and repeated the element of the strips from those teal and plum sections that were leftover from blocks I made for Carole.

Since I had been working in green solids a lot around that time, I included a section of green scrappy slab. And some of my smallest sections stayed small.

Here's the whole pile of blocks and bits that I sent to Isabelle. I enjoyed the freedom to create whatever I felt like in the moment and look forward to seeing how Isabelle puts together this puzzle with all the pieces from the ten members of the bee!

• 8 Comments

•

As I reached the end of my 100 Day Project (July - October 2020) I realized that my series of mini quilts was one color short of a rainbow. Therefore, I had no choice but to make my final improv log cabin purple. There weren't many days left, so I opted for quick and easy. I hadn't made a quarter log cabin yet, so that's what I created, alternating black and white prints with purple prints.

I chose two filler motifs for the free motion quilting.

 

In 100 days, I completed these five mini quilts, start to finish. Each is 16 1/2" x 16 1/2".

 

And the full 2020 series:

I chose the log cabin due to the ubiquitous nature of the traditional log cabin. I love the variety of styles achievable with the log cabin. I feel like this series could continue indefinitely.

You can read all about the other quilts in the series here:

This is day 18 of the 31-Day Blog Writing Challenge with Cheryl.

• 6 Comments

•

I use the descriptor "planned improv" loosely. Sometimes the improv comes in the piecing. Sometimes it comes in the design work before piecing starts. In this case, the improv had to do with having no idea where I was going when I started piecing scraps together. And the plan was that HSTs would be involved, and I was working with a limited amount of scraps (at the beginning) with a limited color palette (that I'd curated for the bag of scraps).

This quilt has been a long time coming. The scraps that were the start of it predate February 2016 when I took Jeni Baker's Creative HST workshop at QuiltCon in Pasadena. (We won't discuss how these are scraps from another project that is not yet finished.) This three-hour evening class was a chance to play. I finished my first four blocks for this quilt that night and eventually went on to create 140 more!

As with many of my quilt projects, I worked on this one intermittently over the years. It had no deadline or destination. The quilt top was finally finished at a quilt retreat in September 2018. I mailed it away to be quilted (by Jess Zeigler) in December 2019. No rush on this one. ;-)

I finished the quilt with a faced binding in order to submit to it PIQF in October for their Online Quilt Festival.

It's 59" x 59". I plan to hang it in my entryway.

 

Unrelatedly, check out the new short film, Canvas, on Netflix.