Show and Tell

Improv Curves in Quilting Cheryl Arkison

Show and Tell

43” x 45’

First quilt finish of 2021!

I’m in a mood. A mood from the state of the world and politics and Covid and all of that. But also a mood to finish things. Head down and focus on something else. This is 1 of 3 quilts I’ve finished in the last few weeks.

Quilters' Playcation Cheryl Arkison

This particular project came about as class samples. When I taught improv curves in person I would grab from the same stack of fabric to demonstrate various ideas. Bits would get used and reused in each class. Eventually, I ran out of the background fabric. That meant it was time to turn things into a quilt.

I do this a lot. It’s better than using random fabric for class samples and being left with a bunch of orphan blocks. This means that the next time I teach this class I will have a different selection of fabrics to use, which will eventually turn into the next quilt.

I was able, thankfully, to use a single width of fabric for the backing. The quilting was based on a sketch I had. My daughter said it made her googly-eyed, but as a quilting pattern it worked fantastic. I’ll admit, I was tempted to stop after one pass, but on a small quilt the second pass isn’t that much more work. Enjoy this badly coloured, but blown out photo so you can see the quilting. One pass was a quarter circle, repeated. The other pass was a modified wave pattern in a different direction. It was all done with a walking foot and 50W Aurifil thread.

Improv Curves Cheryl Arkison

The background fabric is covered in little coloured dots. I used most of the colours in the quilt, so when it came time to choose binding I went with yellow, the one dot colour I hadn’t used. Besides, we all could use a little sunshiny optimism right now!

Maybe these finishes will be just what I need to clear some mental space to get back at it? It’s surely a point of privilege to even think that way, a luxury to get to escape to quilting and ignore the real world. Life isn’t going to change overnight, we know that. A lot of us have a lot of work to do to make the world a better place for all. Yellow binding isn’t going to fix anything. Ignoring the world to finish a quilt is probably the wrong thing to do as well. But we all need respite at time in order to have the energy to keep fighting the fight.

Quilters Playcation Cheryl Arkison