One. Strings
- Improv string block tutorial by Penny/sewtakeahike
Two. Triangles
- Ants to Sugar's Little Tents
- Improv Stripped Geese by Little Ms. Sew-Unsew
- My experiment continued with half-square triangles, half-rectangle triangles, and tall and skinny. I especially like the scrappy ones in the upper left, using my string scraps from last month.
Three. Gentle curves
- Gentle improv curves by Anne/Play Crafts on Lily’s Quilts
Four. Crazy-piecing
- Free-piece fabric making from Victoria Findlay Wolfe
Five. Squares
- In Matt's words, "I cut a variety of squares from my fabrics, joined the squares into pairs, joined those pairs of squares into four patch units, and then assembled those four patch units into the slab."
- My process ended up being similar to how Amanda Jean/crazy mom quilts begins her Scrap Vortex quilt.
Six. Pineapples
- Jacquie Gering's tutorial, which includs a 'half log cabin' variation, shown in the right half of my slab, as well as the full block, on the left.
Seven. Quarter circles
- Improv curved quilt blocks from Lindsay Conner on Craftsy
- I also have often refered to Leanne/she can quilt's tutorial for Improv Circles.
Eight. Churn dash
- This month we got to choose our own block, and I very roughly referenced Leanne/she can quilt's "liberated piecing" technique to create my Churn Dash blocks.
- Also see the Modernized Churn Dash tutorial by Jenifer/42 Quilts.
Nine. Hourglass
- Another 'choose your own' month, I really winged it on this one, and then wrote my own Improv Hourglass tutorial.
Ten: Spikes
- It was in Gwen Marston's Liberated Quiltmaking II that I found Improv Spikes, the blocks that tied my quilt together.
- Also see the Spike Border tutorial from Mary/Molly Flanders... Maker... and Pendants by Jenifer/42 Quilts.
So there's a handy little round-up of improv quilt block tutorials to get you experimenting on your own. Have fun!
Thank you! This is a lot of food for thought.
ReplyDeleteWhat a great resource and round up of tutorials!
ReplyDeleteTotally inspiring! I'm teaching an improv quilt workshop in 3 weeks and I have to share these blocks to my students.
ReplyDeleteWhat a great resource you have put together here Debbie. I am really new to improv piecing but it is something I want to explore this year. Thank you very much!
ReplyDeleteThanks for gathering these all together!
ReplyDeleteThanks so much for all the links! There's no excuse now!
ReplyDeleteThanks for compiling this! I want to go back and start this project and this will be so helpful!
ReplyDeleteReally fun line-up and good references. Those improv churn dashes remind me of a class I took at Houston from Roberta Horton, in 1990. She was teaching the first round of classes based on Gees Bend (second round has been lately), and while she called those quilts "utility" quilts, rather than "improv" the end result is the same. I think the current trend if improv has gotten a lot more mileage, though, as Horton was about 20 years ahead of us all.
ReplyDeleteWhat a great way to improve your improv skills--one technique a month! Thank you for sharing the resources and I just love your color palette. Are you considering putting all these improv slabs into a finished quilt top?!?
ReplyDeleteThank you so much!It's great to have all the tutorials in one post.
ReplyDeleteWhat a great resource to have on hand!! This was a fun project of yours to watch!!
ReplyDeleteThat is really good work, you did pretty good there. Thank you for sharing it with us, will be looking for more such posts
ReplyDeleteThanks for pulling this all together in one place for us. We might be doing this in a group I'm in.
ReplyDeleteWow, what a fun collection of methods!! Your samples look great together!!
ReplyDeleteImprov is definitely my weakness! Having links to these methods in one spot will be helpful! Thanks!
ReplyDeleteThese are really cool designs, loved you work. Thank you for sharing such wonderful post with us and keep posting such nice posts
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