Some much-needed improvisational piecing last week led right to this little quilt. I was playing around with curvy lines, having pulled a haphazardly chosen palette of solids from the ole stash, and somewhere along the line I reached back in to see what could add some interest and came out with what is now one of my favorite
Carolyn Friedlander prints. I really like how it seems to pull everything together, and adds a bit of playfulness.
Since that went so well, I chose another
Gleaned print to frame all the curves. Love how the design in the fabric changes near the edges. Love that alot!
All along, though I didn't know how I was getting there at first, I knew the end result would be a type of window. The dark solid that I used for the background in addition to the improv piecing is
Kona Raisin and
I am quite the fan. I find it to be very rich-looking and I think I've decided it's good to always have a couple of yards on hand.
When it came time for quilting, I opted for some
organic straight-line to echo the movement of the piecing. I actually went to the fabric store for thread and the best match was
Cotton+Steel #753-1078, a medium orange. I used it to densely quilt the frame as well.
And then. I tried a bit of an experiment and did some ghost-quilting in the space below the frame. With any luck, it somewhat mirrors the quilting above, making a four-paned window. Do you see it?
I used
Aurifil 50 wt #4030 [plum] for those bottom panes, and went on to quilt straight lines in the background to give the look of siding on a house. The quilt finished at 36 1/2" x 42", and though decidedly quirky, the notion of looking into a window onto some serendipitous improv really appeals to me. It's kinda what I feel every time I walk to my cutting table with my rotary cutter and no real plan in mind. This piece, for me, recounts a time and place and frame of mind that I keep coming back to. And I hope to go there again soon.