Tag: Color Improv Series

It’s been a few weeks since I talked about this piece. The black pieces are getting larger and my scrap bin is getting emptier.

This is a lot more active than the grey, which you will see in a few days. Those stripes really make this piece dynamic. I think it needs some space for the eye to rest, though. I’ll have to work on that.

As you have seen when I have made other Color Strip donation tops, they have been followed by an improv version. I have been putting a few pieces together from the black/grey/brown (mostly black and grey) scrap bin, but it isn’t going well.

Well, I have made chunks of improvisationally pieced fabric, but mostly they are unsatisfactory. Also, I am not sure if I have enough small scraps to make three quilts. I also am not sure I want to combine the three colors into one quilt.

The grey piece looks really good and I don’t really want to ruin it. The others are meh.

I am tempted to bring them to the guild and see who wants to work on them.

The good news is that I have finished the Blue Improv donation top. The bad news is that it isn’t going to end up as a donation top.

My SIL came over on the weekend and when I showed her this top in progress, she examined it minutely. Then she said that if this were pillows, it would look great on her sofa. Why not? I really like this top and would love to see it  on a regular basis. I am going to make the top into pillows. They will be about 20×20. I was thinking of making 4 of them, but I may make two and have both sides be improv pieced.

I’ll have to make it up to the guild.

I made good  progress during the week on this top. It is a lot of sewing since the scraps are mostly pretty small. I have only gotten it up to 30×35 inches, which isn’t large enough for a baby quilt and on the small side of what I like to donate. I went through the scraps  on my cutting table (a big pile I really need to deal with) and found more blues. I am hoping I have enough to make one more 5 inch strip so the top will be 35×35 inches. I can think about whether to put a border on it after that.

Somehow the title of “My Mind on COVID” is the way I have started to think about this top. There is some cohesion because of the colors. Beyond that, the piece looks fairly chaotic. My mind isn’t chaotic all the time, but the unknown of the future does bring a sense of chaos to my mind.

Aside from getting a top out of the process, I am also doing a good job of cleaning out my blue scrap drawer I can see the bottom of it!

I finally finished this top to the point where I felt good about handing it in. I was rather sick of it, but I also have enough pride not to donation a too-small top.

That is all I handed in. I just provided the top and will let Peggy find backing and batting. I know I could have gotten a bigger hit on my Fabric Used spreadsheet, but I wanted to move on.

I haven’t started anything new for donation, but I will soon. It will be either blue or pink. Both drawers are overflowing. I don’t feel like I made much progress emptying the white drawer, though the White Strip Donation top and this one clearly used up fabric. Since I have more white to use, I could combine it with some of the blues. I know I have more than enough blue scraps to make more than two quilts. Combining some blues with whites will spread the use of blue and make for an interesting variation.

I have been making some progress on the White Improv piece. I am not working as fast as I would like.

It is looking good, I think, different than the others, but interesting in its own way.

The pieces I have in my scrap drawer are a trial, however. There are many, many pieces of great fabric in stupid lengths. They seem to always be wrong. I am making it work, though.

Now that I finished the White Strip Donation Top, I can work on the White Improv Donation Top in earnest.

I spent time on it this past weekend and the slabs are getting bigger.Except for the middle, the piece is still very much in process. The strips I have are very uniform in size and I feel like the other pieces are all triangles, so this isn’t an easy piece to put together.

There is a large-ish slab in the bottom of the drawer and I don’t know if I will make a journal cover or if I will use it in this piece.