I’m in for another year of fun sewing along with Cheryl Arkison’s 2023 Quilters Playcation Adventure Sewalong which she is offering free on YouTube. Last year Cheryl gave us an improv block once a week. This year it’s a block a month with a theme: A treasure map. I’m thinking along the lines of a pirate treasure map, but it might just be a map to find a treasure. Cheryl is offering two versions, a more realistic version and a smaller abstract one. I chose the smaller abstract option.

April is the third month of the map. So far we have:

Ocean waves
Footprints in the sand
A volcano

I chose to make my volcano strip a bit of a story in itself. It goes from healthy flora, to dead flowers, to the lava spewing volcano, to lava traveling over a scorched landscape and finally lava dropping into the ocean. I might redo the 3rd block from the right, adding another bright orange flow adjacent to the cooling lava. I think that’s a good idea.

And a little while later…Here’s the re-do. I think it’s definitely an improvement. That’s the great thing about improv. You can just make another cut (or several cuts) if there is something you want to change!

What’s coming next? We’ve been told there will be palm trees, and eventually there will be a treasure, or at least the something marking the location of the treasure, but we don’t really know. It’s an adventure after all! It’s not too late to join the fun—check the link above for the three 2023 videos that Cheryl has done.