Improv Quilt Project hosted by Cheryl Arkison

I haven’t been doing any quilting for a while now, but this year Cheryl Arkison is hosting a 30 day 30 block Quilters Playcation Adventure Sew Along 2026 from mid January to mid February. So I jumped on board. Here are the first 10 blocks which make up the first 2 rows.

The star fabric and some of the yellows and greens were purchased as a set I curated myself years ago. Intermittently I’ve pulled out the set, didn’t know what to do with it, but still loved it. This year it had just the amount of yardage of the feature fabric I needed for this Sew Along. I always thought it would be a Christmas quilt. But as it is all stars, it’s perfect for sewing during Epiphany

Quilter Playcation Adventure Sew Along 2024, Rainbow Edition top

50+ weeks, 49 improvisational blocks designed by Cheryl Arkison. Every Tuesday Cheryl would appear on Instagram at 2PM Mountain time, give us a new free block design and show us how to sew it together. Sometimes she had one done and other times she was partly designing (or maybe she prefer to say playing on the spot).

Cheryl made a black and white version from fabric she’d designed years ago and a pastel rainbow edition.

I decided to try using a “rainbow” of analogous colors with occasion pops of a brighter color. I stuck with that color scheme for the 14 weeks of winter and early spring, but as the weather got warmer, so did my blocks!

Every few weeks I’d try to cool down a block or two and then the brights would be right back!

I’m really happy with the way these 49 blocks have come together. Cheryl alternated blocks with a background fabric with blocks of just the colored fabrics. Not having a good sense of where we were being taken, I let my initial blocks be the size they wanted to be. So that meant some additions and occasionally rotating a block when it came time to assemble the blocks. The last 14 blocks are all 9.25 inches finished and the top rows are 8.5 in height and vary in width.

The finished quilt top is currently 64 inches square. Still mulling about the back, but thrilled to have the top done before the end of the year!

Working with Cheryl Arkison every week this year has been so much fun. She had me groaning a few times, but the blocks always got made on time. And I have to say, her scrap bin was always way more interesting than mine, even though we were working on the same project. Still wondering how that was possible!

Happy New Year everyone!

Dreamlines 2023 Quilt!

Here it is! My Dreamlines 2023 completed quilt.

I decided to echo the designs of the quilt blocks with my quilting. I thought about stitching flowers in the large yellow diamonds or doing some free motion interlocking rectangles in some of the larger rectangular blocks. This is such an angular quilt that flowers didn’t feel right and it’s already so busy I thought a busy quilting design would end up as a distraction.

The backing came out of my stash. It has so many of the colors of the quilt…and I got flowers included in this quilt after all! I used a scrap of the piecing as the label on this quilt and on another one too. All I had left was a small strip of the blue and yellow peaks!

Thanks to Brenda Gael Smith for this fun year long project!

Dreamlines 2023 Quilt Top

Brenda Gael Smith is the host and creator of the free online #dreamlinesproject. Each month she has designed an improv linear strip block in two different sizes for folks who registered with her. I chose the larger format.

October’s strip is the last one for the 2023 project. Next month Brenda is going to offer ideas for putting the strips altogether. But I went ahead and created my own layout. I’ve made improv quilts which were a nightmare to sew together, but this wasn’t one of those! The pieces really went together rather well, with very few gaps.

Wherever possible, I used scraps from the pieced blocks to fill in gaps between the strips. There are only 3 filler strips that weren’t part of the original blocks. The quilt is a tad wonky…not entirely a true rectangle. I could probably block it into a true shape by steam pressing the quilt top, but I didn’t make as a show quilt, so I’ll probably leave it as is.

I’m going to shop my stash to see if I can find a back. But I’m not sure that will be successful since I don’t often by multiple yards of a fabric! And I need to decide how I want to quilt it. At the moment I don’t really have an ideas about how to do the quilting. I’m going to think on it for a while, and probably will go to Brenda’s website Serendipity Patchwork and her Instagram @brendagaelsmith to see how she’s done the quilting on other projects.

"Cut, Sew, Repeat" Quilts

I made these two quilts after taking Cheryl Arkison’s online Quilters Playcation class, “Cut, Sew, Repeat.” Well, actually I made the orange quilt during the class! Both quilts were made with bundles of fabric which were gifts, plus some additional fabric from my stash.

The quilt at top with made with the “Cat Bundle” from the quilt shop, Gather Here, in Cambridge, MA. When I posted the quilt top on Instagram, the store commented that this was the first quilt they’d seen using the bundle in one quilt. And they loved it! It’s an eclectic feline collection, including big wild cats and whimsical domestic cats. But definitely all cats!

The quilt below was made with another bundle. The prints on the quilt front were from the bundle and the solids were from the stash.

These quilts were both experiments, made just for fun. Both backings were made from leftovers from other quilts. And both quilts have “franken-batting”. What is that?? It’s pieces of leftover batting, cobbled together to make a batting the size needed for the project. I used both zig-zag stitching and fusible quilt batting tape to attach the batting bits. Both do work. The cat quilt has a cotton batting and the orange quilt has a polyester batting as it’s going to be a dog quilt (see my previous post)!

You can get some really interesting patterns using Cheryl’s technique. And you can make a quilt top in record time. It’s definitely worth taking the class at some point when it’s offered again. You can find out when Cheryl is offering classes on her Quilter’s Playcation website.

My 2022 Quilters Playcation Adventure Sewalong Quilt Top

Cheryl Arkison created and hosted a year-long sew along for 2022. Each week she designed a new improv quilt block and demonstrated making it in an Instagram live on Tuesday.

At the beginning of the year she sketched out a number of blocks that she might use. We definitely made some of those designs. But just as often, something in her life or something that happened during the week would be the inspiration for that week’s block.

There is a Ukrainian tryzub which she designed when war broke out and another block showing solidarity for folks affected by flooding from monsoons. There are fireworks for a Canadian holiday (and the US Independence Day). There is a Strong Woman like the statue on Wall Street—though mine is a grandmother welcoming all with open arms. There are lakes and hills, leaves and a glacier and ripples on the water. There is sunshine and a smile. A winter cap called a toque, a fireplace and a cozy looking home. There is a spiderweb, and a section of the Bay Bridge in San Francisco. A heart and a gnome and an arrow. The last block was an American Sign Language
Thank You” sign (the bottom left corner block), her thanks to us for playing along all year, but really it is we who should be thanking her for all her hard work!

I managed to get all 52 blocks into this quilt top. I organized the blocks in columns by their widths and added strips of fabric to the smaller blocks as needed. There was one very large block comprised of a set of 4 log cabin blocks that just didn’t fit anywhere. I cut that block down to fill a gap in a row. Two of the log cabin sections are intact, while only a fraction of the other two remain.

This photo is a bit blurry in places because I took the picture with the quilt lying on the floor. It looks fine on Instagram but not great here. Once it’s been quilted I’ll post another photo of it hanging up properly.

If you want to see what other folks have made, check out the hashtags #qpadventuresewalong and #quiltersplaycation on Instagram. My quilt is scrapy, but there are some truly spectacular quilts made from carefully curated color/fabric combinations. Check them out!

Cut, Sew, Repeat with Curves Quilt Top

A quilting friend gave me a stack of cat motif fabrics curated by Gather Here in Cambridge, MA. Wanting to cut right into them, I decided to use the Cut, Sew, Repeat I learned in the on-line class with Cheryl Arkison in December. (See my December 22, 2022 post).

For this quilt I decided to use the improv curves we learned to do in Cheryl’s 2022 year-long weekly Quilters Playcation Adventure Sew Along #qpadventuresewalong on Instagram.

In my mind I wanted the narrow middle strip to be very narrow—maybe 1/4 inch wide. But I chickened out when I started cutting. Those curves are all on the bias and I was worried such a narrow strip would stretch too much and I didn’t have any extra fabric to use. I added some solid blue and solid pink fabric to make the quilt a tad larger.

I used my 12 1/2 inch square ruler to cut the blocks from the fat quarter. That left me with a good sized 18 inch strip at the bottom of the fat quarter and a section of fabric next remaining on the side of the block cut.

You do lose fabric sewing improv curve blocks. From the 12 1/2 inch starting block, I ended up with 9 1/2 x 10 1/2 finished blocks. I chose to keep them as rectangles, maximizing the size of the trimmed blocks.

I used the bottom strip left on the fat quarter to cut fabric for a binding. The side pieces I cut in vertical strips to make the checkerboard blocks at the bottom and left side of the quilt. That essentially used all the the fabric in each fat quarter.

This went together so quickly. I sewed the curved blocks in an afternoon. The borders took me longer as it wasn’t the puppy’s nap time!

And speaking of that puppy, it’s really hard to get any sewing done, even when he is napping. There is no way I can keep my by previous pace of a post a week. I just don’t have enough free time to sew, never mind actually quilting. My posts this year are going to be erratic…that’s just how life is right now! It’s all good!

While I was ironing today, it got just too quiet…this is what I found when I went to investigate! It’s January, a bit early to turn over the garden. At least in my opinion!!

Cut, Sew, Repeat with Cheryl Arkison

The first week in December, Cheryl Arkison offered a Party Class on Zoom called “Cut, Sew, Repeat” as part of her Quilters Playcation series.

You could choose any size blocks you wanted to work with, as long as they weren’t really small. I had a set of fat quarters and some matching solids so I went with large format blocks. I was going to cut the fat quarters down to a smaller size, which I really prefer working with, but realized I was going to be adding a lot more fabric to my bin of scraps if I did that. So, large it was.

I used two of the fat quarters and ended up looking in my stash for another fabric—the orange dots. That made a total of 7 fabrics, repeating the solids in the block sets. I also varied how I cut the fabrics in the block sets.

In the end, the blocks finished at 14 inches square. The top and bottom borders are trimmings from squaring up the blocks. That made the quilt a little rectangular and was a good way to use the leftover off-cut strips of fabric.

This class was a lot of fun and I really like the quilt. It was also super fast to sew. Cheryl said she’d definitely repeat this class in the future. Check out her future offerings at QuiltersPlaycation.com in the Parties box.

More Blocks from 52 Weeks of Improv Blocks with Cheryl Arkison

Here are some more of my improv block from Cheryl Arkison’s year long Quilters Playcation Adventure Sew Along on Instagram. #qpadventuresewalong

These are all blocks with water themes.

The block above is 31/52. The inspiration for this block was a glacier in a mountain pass. Initially I sewed patterned strips all the way to the top of the block. But when I saw someone else’s block which clearly had a sky over the glacier I realized that made a much better glacier block. So, I took my block apart and added a bit of sky.

Here is Block 35/52. The inspiration Cheryl Arkison had for this block was Ripples on Water.

Block 35/52, Ripples on Water

Block 17/52. The inspiration was a segment of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge.

Block 17/52, Segment of the Golden Gate Bridge

And finally, here’s a link to a post about one of my favorite blocks, Sailing at Sunset.

So far I’ve shown blocks which are mostly representational. Next time I’ll share some blocks which are pure improv without a specific theme.

Making a quilt using the book "East-Meets-West Quilts" by Patricia Belyea

East-Meets-West Quilts is a book which I just discovered. It’s not new, having been published by abramsbooks.com in 2017. The author, Patricia Belyea, has a shop, Okan Arts, which sells imported vintage Japanese yukata fabrics. She created this book using these lovely yukata fabrics.

All the blocks in her book finish at 8 inches, based on the Kanji character hachi. The main pieces in each block are fractions of 8…2s and 4s. The concept is simple but the possibilities are endless. One of the design concepts that Patricia introduced is the “unexpected visitor”—one block or several, which are completely different that all the other blocks in the quilt. This adds a element of surprise and delight to the quilt.

I went hunting through my stash looking for a floral fabric which would work in these blocks. Most of my fabrics are small scale, but I did find “Busy Lizzie”, a Kaffe Fassett print. I paired that print with the newly released solids by Tula PInk, Unicorn Poop and Dragon’s breath. All these fabrics are from FreeSpirit Fabrics. That’s an added bonus, as I expect they will all continue to play well as the quilt gets used.

Here are the blocks on my design wall. I used the pattern, “Hidden Wonders” from the book. However, my added strips were cut at 1 inch wide, so my strips are a tad wider than those in the pattern.

Part of my new quilt using a pattern from “East-Meets-West Quilts”

I was so glad that I took several pictures of this quilt before I pulled the blocks off the design wall to sew the quilt top together. Even though I had the blocks in order by row, I kept looking back to the photo to make sure i wasn’t turning the orientation of a block. (Even so, I still had to do a bit of “un-sewing”)!

While I was choosing a final layout, I also edited several photographs of possible layouts to grey scale to see if the colors were actually balanced throughout the quilt. There a few problems I can see in the layout below in the quilt on the left side. (It probably loads first if you are reading on a phone). First, the 2 large light patches in the upper left hand corner, I thought I could do better with several of the very dark blocks. I moved some blocks around and ended up with a much better balance. If you have a pattern that is variable, it really is worth taking the extra time to check the layout in grey scale.

So much fun! I’ll have the completed top for you to see in my post next week.

Gnome Improv Quilt

Last finish for 2020! This is my gnome improvisational quilt.

I was given one yard of the gnome fabric by a friend earlier this year. I purchased the white on white snowflake fabric, the hot pink star fabric,the binding and the backing, but I think everything else came out of my stash.

I fussy cut out as many gnomes as I could, and then started sewing on scraps and other pieces of fabric which I cut to fit. Sometimes I sew slabs—12 x 12 inch improv blocks to make a improv quilt. I started to do that with this one, bur realized it was going to be a full size quilt…and that wasn’t what I wanted. So instead I took the blocks I’d started and turned them into sections which I sewed into strips in a variety of widths. The quilt turned out to be exactly the size of a crib batting. I hadn’t planned it out, but that was just perfect!

The back of the quilt is a flannel plaid.

The Gnome Improv quilt is quilted with a mix of swirls on the white snowflake blocks and meandering or loops on of the rest of the quilt.

The gnome on the label is wearing a mask made from the selvedge of the gnome fabric! It is 2020 after all!

Happy New Year!!

Improv Paper Piecing

Amy Friend, DuringQuietTime.com, gave a workshop at the Proper Bostonian Quilters Guild in October. The workshop was based on her book, Improv Paper Piecing, A Modern Approach to Quilt Piecing.

The goal of the class was to create a paper pieced quilt block design that was improvisational. That block could then be set into a quilt setting of your own choosing. Amy provided sheets of copy paper with some basic outlines to help folks start a design of their own.

Squares are the easiest block because they can be rotated in any direction and will still fit together. Rectangles are more challenging because they can’t do that.

I decided to design my own block, with a 1 to 2 ratio. 2 of my 3 inch x 6 inch rectangular blocks together make a 6 inch square block. It’s sort of having my cake and eating it too!

Amy has a great method for paper piecing which is a whole lot easier than the traditional method. It’s outlined in her book. But if you get a chance, take her workshop—it really helps to have her show you how to do it with paper, fabric and a light box!

I decided to make a complete project on the workshop day, so I opted to make a mini quilt/pillow cover. I used 4 blocks, stacked vertically. I got all the piecing done during the workshop and finished 3/4 if the project. That was a good day!

Because I picked a small project, I didn’t get to experiment with my square paired rectangular blocks. But with the power of EQ 8 (Electric Quilt 8) I can!

Here are three layouts I tried using my blocks in EQ8. The layout options really are almost endless.

Dancing Purple Bow Ties

Circus Tents

Cats!

If you are wondering why none of the quilts designed in EQ8 look like the mini quilt, it is because one of the blocks in my mini quilt is a mirror image of the other three blocks. I really like it, but it’s there because I accidentally sewed a block using my original drawing rather than the reverse-mirror image block papers I had prepared for sewing! But this is improv…which means it’s all good!!