Hard at Work

You know sometimes all you want to do is sew and boy, have I done that.  Taking Improvisational

Piecing with Veronica Hofman-Ortega at John C. Campbell's Folk School was one of my better ideas.  I love a class that starts with design exercises that will lead into bigger and better ideas.  Not to mention the ladies in my class were great!  There was a full range of quilters in the class  - from the very experienced to the beginner.  All were traditional, so this was pushing pretty much everyone out of their comfort zone.  But let me tell ya, they were up to the challenge.  After the first day our design walls were already starting to fill up.  By the end, it was amazing what we all got done!

Sewing  + Challenges + Great Company = Perfect Class.

We learned all sorts of improvisational shapes - strips, triangles, curves.  All design exercises were pretty loose, and Veronica told us that we could play with them as much as we wanted.

The strips were to be made with black, white and a color.  This is where it took me...

It definitely needed some zing so I added lime green which I thought was much better.

The triangles gave me the most problem since the colors were #1 solids and #2 chosen from a limited palette.  I ended up with a design wall of pretty sad triangles.  We tried some improv curve piecing which I liked marginally better...but still sad.  

What's a girl to do?  Well, cut them up and try piecing them back together.  The most interesting idea was taking two triangles and curve piecing them together.  With a few of those units and more curves piecing, I ended up with this.  Interesting, but not completely finished.  

Finally, we could explore on our own, so I did some brainstorming which led me to these simple ideas (by this time, I was pretty tired)

This time I picked a palette I loved - orange, golden yellow, purple and blue.  By then end of the day I got what looks me to me like a Dr Suess house  - which makes me smile. All it needs is the roof!!  I'm kinda diggin' this idea.  I can see it leading to bigger and better things for sure!  It's fun to play something representational but still give it that improv twist.  

Improvisational quilting is really so freeing creatively.  It was extra fun watching the class see the joy of it.  So although tired ... I do have a full design wall!

So, What Have You Been Up to Creatively?