Fireworks

With improv, things often don't go as planned, if there even was a plan. And just sometimes, things get carried away. Or maybe that's just me…

But when my @beesewcial mate, Leanne @shecanquilt, announced this month's prompt as "Fireworks," I had a loose idea of where I wanted to take it. Somewhere along the way, the scale got waaayyyy off. My original layout is shown below. See the 'center' is already pieced, and I was thinking I'd fill in all around it. So far, so good. I'd used bright colors for the fireworks, and a variety of sky-colored fabrics for the background. Most of the fabrics were quilter's cotton, but there were a couple of shot cottons as well, which was fine by Leanne.

But before long, I knew I was in trouble. Things were getting big fast. At the point shown here, if I'd trimmed it, I would have ended up with a block approximately 13" x 36"…. larger that our normal equivalent of two 12.5" blocks. 

I could have cut the slab into two or more smaller blocks, but knowing Leanne, I suspected she'd enjoy cutting into the slab herself when it came time to puzzle blocks together. So I wrote her and we chatted about it and agreed the piece had possibilities that could be determined at a later date. Whether it's as filler or smaller blocks or whatever, I'm going to send it Leanne's way for her to use as she sees fit once she has the rest of the bee's blocks. This isn't how things usually go when I make bee blocks, but that's improv for you.