Craft Book Month

The last few weeks, it's been fun to hear fellow bloggers talk about their favorite craft books and share project from them. There's been quite the expansive blog hop as part of the celebration of "all things craft book". In all honestly, there are about 10 stacked at the foot of my ironing board, 3 or 4 of which I've gone back to repeatedly over the last year for inspiration. One of my favorites is Quilting Modern by Jacquie Gering and Katie Pedersen.

I love that though this book has projects you can do, it strongly encourages you to let the techniques inspire you to create your own unique designs. So it's very conducive to newcomers to improv as well as those that want to move in their own direction.

Though I'd dabbled in improv quilting a few times before, it was a whole different thing to actually take a class with one of the Quilting Modern authors. To put it simply, we practiced every technique in the book, ending the day with an odd little assortment of pieced blocks, and a wad of Katie's scraps to finish whatever.

I decided to make a sampler quilt of sorts with my blocks, and felt full license to put them together however I felt moved. And I started by taping a grid up on the wall of my sewing room, and 'building' each panel, as described in the book. 

Here's my finished quilt, loosed based on the book's "mod tv quilt".

I used the same panel technique as I pieced the remaining class blocks into a backing.

This quilt was a fun foray deeper into improv, with a book that I know will continue to inspire me.

Linking up with Craft Buds.