Summer 2021 Mini Quilt Challenge: Improv Piecing

Hello Friends and Welcome!

With six weeks of the Summer 2021 Mini Quilt Challenge complete, we are now half way through! I've been having so much fun researching new techniques, and experimenting with different styles!

The prompt I followed for week six was Improv piecing. Improvisation in any form is an exciting challenge to take on; it requires a knowledge of your craft, a desire to create something new, and trust in the creative process.

Before we get started, I wanted to mention that I was plagued by a migraine for the better part of the week, so I apologize that many of my process photos aren’t of a great quality. On top of that, red, the predominant colour in my quilt, tends to blow out the image exposure, so all my pictures came out different colours. I hope you’re able to enjoy this week’s post in spite of all that!

Now without further ado, let's see what I made for week six!

Improv Quilt Research

For a long time, I believed that improv quilts fit into a specific style; something modern and scrappy, with lots of pieces in a variety of sizes and colours. But my research showed me that this is not the case.

While there are some styles of piecing that were developed as improv techniques, such as string or crumb piecing, not all improv quilts look the way we might expect.

As it turns out, improv is an approach to quilt making; it is an attitude and a process, not a specific style or aesthetic. Improv means starting for the sake of creating, but not necessarily with a clear picture of the final product. It is the ability to adapt along the way, change the direction of the project, and accept mistakes when they are made.

Although they are improvised, along the way, the maker needs to establish some form of order. Order is important for setting limits, knowing when a quilt is complete, and keeping the quilt flat and cooperative. But order doesn't have to be a severe limitation, it can be created in many ways:

Intention

Intention is the thing that drives your desire to create. Every quilt starts with an idea, a feeling, or a purpose; it could be the desire to use up some of the scraps from your stash, a particular colour scheme, or a theme that spoke to you.

Whatever the intention was, it made you want to create something that had never before existed in the world!

Blocks

Quilters are very familiar with the concept of blocks; pieces are assembled into smaller units first, then those units are assembled to make the larger quilt.

The process of assembling blocks into a quilt can also be applied to the improv style as a way of creating order. By choosing a size or shape for the improvised pieces to finish at, you're able to create landmarks in the process.

Once you have a selection of blocks, lay them out together to determine setting, placement, and overall design. You can see if there are too many of one colour or not enough of others. Or if there are some blocks which are too large or small in comparison to others. Blocks give you a way of looking at the unfinished quilt and seeing its potential, but also what the quilt may be lacking.

Improv blocks have the freedom to be any size or shape. They could be classic geometric shapes like squares, triangles, and hexagons, or more abstract and organic. The quilt top could be made as a single block or from many small ones.

Using Rulers

While improv could be freeform, with pieces being cut randomly, it can also use regular geometric forms. Ruler cutting is really helpful for keeping the quilt top flat, ensuring there are no holes, and making quilting easier.

If straight lines are not the look you're trying to achieve, templates can be used! Gentle curves can be successfully cut by eye, but circles and other tight curves require templates. Without a good template, sewing curves can be complicated and result in stretched seams and warped blocks.

Crumb Piecing

With all that freedom offered by the improv process, I chose to narrow myself to a style of piecing that's often associated with improv: crumb piecing.

Crumb piecing is a style where smaller pieces of fabric, often scraps from old projects, are sewn together to make a patchwork. The patchwork is then treated as a single piece of fabric and either cut into blocks as it is, or pieced into a pattern.

In the picture above, you can see where I used the crumb piecing method to assemble some grey scraps into the corner piece of a quilt block.

Crumb piecing is unique from traditional block making because the pieces used can be of any shape. Triangles can be sewn to squares which can be sewn to strips. Whatever shape your pieces have is a valid shape that can be used. It is very much like a puzzle with no wrong answers.

Making the Mini

For this week's project, I started by looking through my scraps for inspiration! I noticed that I had significantly more scraps in my red, green, blue, and black bags than any others, and chose to limit myself to them.

With my colours narrowed down, I had to figure out which approach I was going to take. Crumb piecing doesn't have any strict rules, leaving me with a lot of creative freedom.

I decided to assemble my scraps into a larger piece of fabric. Initially, I was thinking of making them as large as a fat quarter, but along the way, I found that my pieces weren't quite getting that big. It was much easier to make smaller, oddly shaped panels than one larger piece.

I started with my red scraps, piecing together triangular pieces first, then adding rectangles and squares around them to make the piece larger. I found that starting with the triangles first, then building off of them worked better for me than trying to add triangular pieces later on.

During this process, the idea of triangles persisted in my head, and I decided to make some triangular templates. I made two equilateral triangle templates, one at 4" and one at 2" so I would have a few sizes to work with. My templates were cut from light cardboard, and included ¼" seam allowances.

I taped the templates to the back of one of my rulers so I could use them without being worried about damaging them, then cut a variety of large and small triangles from my patchwork crumb panel.

With the red pieces made, I moved onto the black, following the same steps until I had several black triangles of each size.

At this point, I started to play around with composition. I laid out my triangles, moving them around to make different patterns. I auditioned a few scraps from the blue and green bags as well, but I felt they distracted from the intense relationship between the red and black and decided not to include them.

I rearranged my triangular blocks until I arrived at this composition: red in the top left, transitioning to black in the bottom right. I wasn't sure that I loved it, but due to the time restrictions of the Mini Quilt Challenge, I moved forward.

When laying out the triangles, I intentionally placed them into rows for easy assembly. With the two sizes of triangles, I could have created a more abstract or challenging composition, but I liked the order the rows added.

After piecing my triangles into rows and pressing them, I laid them out together and decided that my original composition wasn't quite right.

The feelings I got from the combination of black and red were intense and dynamic, and somehow, I felt that the original idea wasn't. I rearranged the rows, flipping them when I felt like it, and ended up with this:

I found that the new composition had a lot more tension and feeling. I really love the way the different rows were now emphasized, rather than blending in with each other. Improvising that change added something new and unexpected that I never would have planned!

With the quit top completed, it was time for some quilting! Crumb piecing results in a lot of seams, often in inconvenient places, which builds up bulk in the quilt top regardless of how seams are pressed. I did my best to press my seams open in an effort to make the top as flat as possible, but some areas still ended up quite bulky.

I was very concerned about breaking needles if I tried machine quilting, so I opted for a simple outline design using hand quilting instead. And I think this choice worked out beautifully! I really like the texture of hand quilting, and the quilted lines are much softer against the harshness of the black and red piecing.

To finish the quilt, I squared off and bound the edges. Suddenly, I was done!

VA, Improv Mini Quilt, 2021, 13¾” x 11¼”, cotton thread and fabric, poly-cotton batting.

I'm really happy with the finished result! I love how dynamic the piecing is, and there's such strong tension between the two colours! I had a lot of fun allowing the process to guide my design, embracing changes along the way, and accepting an unexpected outcome!

Friends, if you've ever been interested in improv quilt making, I would definitely recommend giving it a try! You don't have to completely let go of control, just try accepting small changes along the way, and maintaining an open mind!

Through my research this week, I ended up learning that a lot of my work is more improvisational than I knew! Adding blocks to an existing pattern, altering the piecing of backgrounds and borders, and generally diverting from the pattern as written are all common characteristics of my practice. Characteristics I'm excited to continue embracing!

If you've enjoyed this week's post and haven't already checked it out, take a look at the rules and prompts for the Summer 2021 Mini Quilt Challenge in my original Challenge Announcement post. You may be inspired to make a mini quilt or your own!

If you do, I would love to see what you create! Feel free to share photos and stories in the comments below, or on social media using #summer2021miniquilts! If you'd like to see my progress between updates, visit me on Instagram @vafibrearts!

Because we have reached the halfway point of this Challenge, for week seven, I will be taking a break! My next Project Update will be posted next week on 12 August, and my next mini quilt post will be on 16 August. I look forward to seeing you all then!