Improv!

No, I haven't taken to doing theatre games in my spare time... I'm just branching out, people!

A couple weeks ago, my friend Ade over at Chezzetcook Modern Quilts started up an on-line bee - ModQImprovB Canada. She was looking for 12 quilters interested in a modern quilting and a block exchange - suffice it to say, it filled up quickly.  Each month for a year, one of is Queen B and chooses a block we'd like and the others make it and pop it in the mail... sweet, huh? We have a group on FaceBook to communicate and share pics of what we're working on.

So Ade was first up and shared this blog post to give us an idea of what she wanted. And the scraps started flying! The blocks aren't even due until sometime in June, but lots of people had them done already. You know me, I couldn't fall behind! Here's what I worked up on Friday evening.

Improv piecing is a lot of fun... not that I didn't know that before. I dove into my scrap boxes (Ade wanted scrappy!) and got to work sewing and snipping as I went. This 14 inch(ish) block came together fairly quickly.

I so enjoyed it that I didn't want to stop... improv blocks were the order of the day for Saturday and Sunday. I haven't spent much time at the machine lately and it was just the free form task I needed to recharge.

I made 8 inch finished blocks and sewed them together quite simply. You can't really see the blocks... which is pretty much what I was going for. I also took the opportunity to play with the quilting. It's quilted in a 1 inch grid pattern and I changed thread colour 4 or 5 times. Good excuse to finish off some of those partial spools I had kicking around! The backing is a funky green and yellow dotty print from Free Spirit Fabric's Wildwood collection that I found at Marden's in Maine. Gotta love 5$ a yard!

So happy to have spent the week-end sewing... just a couple weeks until I can sew the summer away! Even made a few other surprises to share later in the week!