My Country House Blocks

The last four pieced blocks for the TQS 2015 BOM, My Country House by Lynette Anderson, are finally done! Yes, I've been distracted by various new projects, but they were also a little picky to put together.

The original blocks finish at 9" square, but my 3/4 scale blocks finish at 6 3/4" square, and the math starts to get complicated. So I decided to foundation paper piece all the outside units.

I drafted my own foundations on graph paper at the original 3" finished size, and then used the photocopier to reduce them to 75%, which is 3/4 scale.

I don't know why my cutting mat always seems to be upside down!

Anyway, then I trimmed the units, removed the papers, and put the rest of the block together like a normal nine patch.

This block is called Garden Path. The white diamond is normally continuous around the block, but I deliberately broke it up. My hope is to balance these pieced blocks with the applique blocks, so I don't want the piecing to be too dominant.  We'll see soon if I was successful with that!

Truthfully, I was running out of ideas at this point, but I thought it might be interesting to have a block that is all background fabrics. It looks a bit like a swampy pond to me!

And, here are all four together. If you missed the first nine, you can find them here.

Why Improv?

Organic

"Organic" really is the word that sums up improv style to me. I like the way it looks -- every piece has its own character, just as in real life. I like the method, working with materials that are already on hand, just as Mother Nature does. Adapting to local conditions, and letting them determine some of the result.

But, that doesn't mean there isn't a plan. A seed intends to be a flower. It may not know exactly how it's going to be a flower, but that's the goal.

And if things don't exactly work out, that's ok too! Improv provides the opportunity to experiment and try new ideas in a low-risk environment. It's just old scraps.

For my quilt, though, I already have a general idea of the final layout, the colour scheme, what it's going to say, and what the individual elements are likely to be. I never have a shortage of ideas! And since I have the idea, I think it's best to honour it, while staying open to change as it develops.

Personally, I think there must be an idea before anything can come to life, and the timing of the idea -- before or during production -- is not important. Sometimes I think that improv is a little bit of smoke and mirrors. You're never really creating something out of nothing. Jazz musicians improvise on an existing tune. Improv theatre starts with an initial premise, and often follows a rough plot as well.

The challenge, and the benefit, is in figuring out how to get there. You're solving problems, you're developing new techniques, or using old ones in new ways. It's very much a "flow" experience. I'm feeling more confident and relaxed about all my projects, not just this one.

And, I can definitely say that it stimulates creativity! I've been working on several different projects this past week, including a completely new one that is not improv at all. I'm glad I was able to try out these flowers before the Ad Hoc Improv Quilters link up ends. Check out everyone else's posts here!

Letters, Leaders & Enders

Here's a shot of our maples in the late day sun last week. It was windy, which is why it's a little blurry. This week it's been either sunny and windy, or dark and rainy, so this is the best I've been able to do. This year their colour has been the best ever, which I think is partly due to the dry summer. But mainly I think it's because they are getting a lot more light since we cut down the ash trees that were damaged in the 2013 ice storm.

The moon was up early too:

Yesterday it was really dark all day, so I was happy to be inside and working on my next batch of improv letters:

I was going to put them together today, but here I am blogging instead, so it may not happen!

I also decided this week to see if I can add a leaders & enders project into the mix. Bonnie Hunter has a good description of the process here. I've avoided an L&E project up until now, because I didn't want to sacrifice the quality of my main piece by being distracted by a second project. But with all the short seams in this project (and also in My Country House), I've been using up a lot of thread anchors, so I thought I would try it.

For about an hour I wondered which new project I could start that would be appropriate, until I remembered my hourglass quilt! I ran out of steam on this project in early 2014, because it is super boring. But, boring is perfect for an L&E project, because I don't want to have to think about it at all.

I still need at least 300 more hourglasses, and all the fabrics are already cut and marked. I set up the rest of my lights and darks, right sides together, and piled them up:

I don't know how many are in there, but it is 4.5" tall!

So, can I improv and sew leaders and enders at the same time? Yes! In fact, with all the small fiddly seams on these letters, it was a relief to put in an hourglass set and just rip down the middle of that. Somehow it feels more balanced. At the end of the day I had the first two seams done...

...on 23 hourglass sets (which will be 46 hourglass blocks). It feels really good to get that project moving again. Hopefully this will be a painless way to eat up a lot of the preliminary work on this project.

I admit I've been having one of those "what was I thinking?" moments, about my decision to make this a queen-size quilt. Sure, the hourglasses are easy to make, but I really didn't think much about how long it would take to sew them all together as well. Now I'm starting to think about that too! Hopefully I can do at least some of that in L&E fashion as well. I'll keep you posted!