One Colour Challenge Blocks

More often than not I teach a class and the samples used for demo purposes build up. I don’t count them on my Quilts Under Construction list either. That is, I don’t count them until I am sure they are going to actually be turned into a quilt top and not remain as samples. Most things eventually get on the list. Then there are the times I go from class sample to desired quilt top just one block in.

That’s what happened with these blocks.

One Colour Challenge has been one of the classes I taught this past year for the online environment. It is a lesson in colour and value, as well as half square triangle construction and, if time allows, block assembly. In the very first class I taught I fell in love with the block I made. Each time I taught the class I had fun playing along with the students making more blocks. When I started making blocks on my own time I knew it was destined to be a quilt top.

Now my plan is to make 25 blocks. This will give me an 80” x 80” quilt top. We all know how I love bigger quilts, even when playing. I’ve even made a list of colours to explore to get me up to 25 unique blocks. It’s going to be bold and awesome! I would love to use each fabric only once, but I’m not sure even my stash is deep enough!

In the class we make 16 HSTs. There are a lot of different blocks you can make with 16 HSTs. In prepping for the class I went through a number of quilt block books looking for options. That’s how I found the one I went with but this option above was very tempting too. Either way, you get amazing secondary patterns between the light and dark sections. So many possibilities!

This, indeed, is the best part about playing. A few basic rules to the game but then infinite possibilities!

Improv Square in a Square with Hand Dyed Fabrics

Hand dyed fabric plus an improv experiment equals a vibrant and unexpected quilt top.

The hand dyes were the rejects from my perimenopause project. Just not right for that project but still a stack of gorgeous fabric. to be honest, I simply expected them to be set aside to be used years from now - like most of my experiments. But then I had an idea, a wonderful, let’s see if this works at all idea.

Even though I’ve been quilting for a few decades and I can design patterns, with the math, without too much trouble, sometimes you just need to cut up the fabric and sew to see if the idea works. So I had an idea and needed to cut and sew to see if it was plausible. The stack of the hand dyes was there, just looking pretty. In my quilting journey I was taught that hand dyes were precious and to be savoured. Well, life these days begs for joy wherever we can get it so I dove into the pile. Also, now that I’ve been playing with the hand dyes I am comfortable making more if I want/need them. So I grabbed the stack, picked a few and got to playing.

And play I did! My experiment worked and I fell in love with the results. So I kept playing and playing and in a few hours I had the makings of a quilt top! The pretty stack of hand dyes is now a messy pile of scraps and I couldn’t be happier.

It all worked so well that I’ve decide to offer up this Improv Square in a Square as the next Quilters’ Playcation Playdate. We will hang out and I will demo a stress free way to make this Square in a Square block in any size. Sign up for the Friday or Saturday session, or both.

June 4 - 5 PM MST or June 5 - 10 AM MST

Remember, if you sign up for the Quilters’ Playcation Get The Scoop newsletter you get a discount code for your first event.

April Morning Make 2021

Blackout Poetry

Take a page from a book, literally, and cross out words so that the ones left are a poem. Made famous by Austin Kleon, blackout poetry is a unique way of creating. Part destruction, part seeking, part rebuilding, all creativity. What you remove is as important as what remains.

To begin I bought myself a hefty Sharpie and perused my bookshelf for a book I was willing to destroy in the process. I chose a self help book on anxiety. Not because I don’t need it anymore (hello third wave of Covid!) but because it was small in stature. My beginner brain assumed that less words on the page would make it easier to construct the poem.

That was a false assumption.

Such a specific topic and small pages meant that each page I ripped from the book was likely to contain one very narrow topic with a lot of repetition of words. This, I think, made it challenging to not only construct a poem I felt was valid and beautiful but also one that wasn’t necessarily about what was already on the page. Some days were better than others. Here are some of my favourites.

At first I felt my heart in my throat as I ripped pages from the book. The destruction! I really do love paper books. Then I started to see the beauty in the craggy edge where the page came away from its confines. I love the back side, where the Sharpie bleeds through. I love the searching for more beyond the content of the page. Finding the poem is almost like resuscitating the words so that they aren’t lost to the ether.

March Morning Make 2021

“You are so creative”

A dear friend said this to me after my first post for March Morning Make. I actually had a visceral reaction to her statement. It’s not that I disagree with her, it’s that she said it with the hanging “and I am not” to it. I was actually upset about it for days. The thing is, I am no more creative than she is, than anyone is. What I am is willing to exercise and explore that creativity in unique ways. She is a mother and works in a dynamic environment. Her daily life requires constant creativity to get through the day. She is so creative.

Scientists and engineers are creative. Doctors and teachers are creative. Maybe not accountants, at least not at their jobs. Athletes surely are. Parents are definitely creative. We ALL are creative. Indeed, we all need to be creative to get through the day. Those who exercise their muscles through creative pursuits like art, music, writing, sewing, and more are the ones deemed creative. No, we are just the ones hitting the gym. Just like an athlete of any sort is the one that devotes their physical and mental energy to a physical pursuit, those of us deemed creative are the ones that devote our extra physical and mental energy to a creative pursuit. It’s a choice about how we spend our time more than anything.

So, for March, I chose to spend my time doing something completely foreign to me - making paper flowers. It made me a beginner again and it was awesome. My creative muscles got quite the workout, not to mention my clunky fingers. Being a beginner at something is amazing. It forces you to slow down, fire the brain up in new ways, and explore in an unfamiliar way. I know that all that terrifies people and it can do a number on your confidence, but I, personally, love it. It’s a good reminder that it is okay to be a beginner, that it’s okay to not be great or even good at something, that trying is as important as finishing.

I based the majority of my flowers on directions in the book The Exquisite Book of Paper Flowers by Livia Cetti. Not having a clue what I was doing I definitely needed the structure of directions. So I picked flowers based on their looks and whether she said they were easy or not. Partway through the month I decided I wanted to make some flowers that were not in her book so went to You Tube for instructions. Having some basic understanding from daily play meant that I could extrapolate and make up some of my own things. They didn’t always work, but I wouldn’t know that unless I tried.

Most interesting to me over the past month is my changing perspective on the flowers themselves and how I wanted them to look. I went back and forth between liking the not so perfectly accurate look of the tissue paper flowers and construction paper leaves, some days I preferred the crepe paper and other days it drove me nuts. I quite enjoyed the manipulation of the paper with bleach, that stayed throughout.

Will I make paper flowers again? Probably, if the occasion comes or the mood strikes. For now I have a lot of flowers to deliver to friends. We are at least 6 weeks away from real flowers here and we could also use the colour. Whether or not, however, you can sure that I my creative muscles are in better shape after this month. I hope yours are too.