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Shannon Fraser Designs

Spreading quilty joy one stitch at a time!

The Making of an Improv Charity Quilt Block

February 16, 2016 by Shannon 5 Comments

If you were following along last week as I took over 52 Quilters social media accounts (which was a blast BTW), then you already know I’m working on a charity quilt intended for a local women’s shelter.  Just one of the many reasons why I love our quilting community!

After I posted a picture of the first block on Instagram, I received a comment from a fellow quilter who would love to be able to piece like that. I was completely touched to have someone compliment my work and I wanted to encourage them that they too could tackle such a project.

Since I am dealing solely with the scraps leftover from the QuiltCon Michael Miller Charity Challenge the Montreal Modern Quilt Guild tackled, I couldn’t recreate the original block. So I put together my first Flipagram of another block (they will all be different) to help show how it all comes together.

This is complete improv. I din’t have a plan. I didn’t measure things out. I just started sewing strips together. And then decided to cut up them up into various sizes – mainly 5″, 3″ and 2″! There were a few solid scraps that I also cut into similar sizes. 

From there I decided to randomly lay them out on my design wall and thought it could be fun to piece the pieces together like a little puzzle based on where the pieces fit best. 
Here’s how it looks:

I hope this encourages you to think outside the box, skip using a pattern and just follow your gut. There is no right or wrong here. Just fun!
Now if only the blocks came together as quickly as in the video!!
xo
Shannon

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Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Charity, Modern Quilting, Quilting Community, Tip Tuesday

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Comments

  1. Josée Carrier says

    February 19, 2016 at 4:04 pm

    It looks great Shannon! It`s great when you step out of your confort zone, enjoy the process and love the result.

    Reply
    • Shannon says

      February 20, 2016 at 1:58 pm

      Thank you, Josée!! I've made some great progress and have literally used up every last inch of the coloured fabric!! Hoping to have it done for our next meeting 🙂

      Reply
  2. Izzy says

    February 20, 2016 at 2:34 pm

    This is awesome! Thank you for sharing your process – improv is still very new to me and it scares me a little. I really like reading about how other people do it.

    Reply
    • Shannon says

      February 22, 2016 at 12:53 am

      So happy you enjoyed the post, Izzy! I really enjoy improve, even if it can take a little longer than working with a pattern 😉

      Reply
  3. Shannon says

    February 22, 2016 at 12:52 am

    This comment has been removed by the author.

    Reply

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Hi! I'm Shannon. A modern quilt pattern designer based in Montreal. My quilting journey started by stumbling upon a half square triangle tutorial and I've been hooked since. I'm now spreading that quilty joy to you! Read More…

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