With all your 30 Days of Improv QAL blocks made, it’s time to turn your focus to pulling them together in a cohesive manner. This week it’s all about modern improv play the final composition
This can be easier said than done 😉 Which is why we’ve snuck lots of tips into the Week 5 newsletter.
Today, I wanted to share a little insight into how my own modern improv play with composition went!
What I made – the final composition
What my goal was
The goal for my composition was to focus on connections between my improv blocks. I was curious to see how I could fit those individual compositions into a larger cohesive one.
While piecing my blocks, I absolutely loved working with the purple fabric. I loved the intensity and boldness it offered.
But when I was working on the composition, I found the purple to be a little too intense and found myself gravitating towards the orange as the main background colour. You might remember that this actually aligns with my original plan where I pulled the orange fabric as my main feature colour. Funny how things bounce back and forth during the creation process 😉
You might also notice that some blocks never made it into the final composition. There’s no rule that dictates you have to use all of your blocks in your quilted wall hanging.
This is the beauty of being the decider for your improv piece: you get to call the shots on what makes the cut and what doesn’t!
Improv quilt back
To maximize the fabric I was working with for this modern improv play, I opted to feature the scraps left over for a pieced backing.
I purposely left out the purple to stick with my preference of showing off the orange and peachy pink tones.
The effect is coordinated without being matchy-matchy. The improv quilt backing was simply pieced which balances out the more detailed front. Plus, it shows off the quilting lines beautifully.
What I love about the final composition
The thing I love most about the final 30 Days of Improv QAL composition is the balance of colours. This one speaks to my colour-loving heart and that orange just brings me instant joy when I spot it! As you can see, the colour is clearly a fave for both quilting and my fashion choices!!
Quilting
If you’ve been following along in my weekly newsletter, then you know I’ve been dealing with some hand skin issues. Namely, my fingers are cracking left, right, and center. This has meant my hand quilting has taken a back seat for the time being as hand stitching with Band-Aids on and while in pain is zapping my joy.
But you know how much I love texture and that left me wanting to challenge myself to incorporate as much texture through machine quilting.
I’ve shared with you before how much fun it is to combine different thread weights into one project and, while I normally include hand quilting in that mix, this time it focused 100% on machine quilting with the following thread weights:
- 50wt
- 12wt
Thread options
I pulled out several thread options to see what was calling to me and see what the piece needed. My original idea was to feature a few different thread colours in the composition. In the end, I was loving the effect the orange thread was creating and decided to stick with that as the main colour.
Some challenges along the way
Things started off nice and smooth with the 12wt performing like a champ in my sewing machine, but then, suddenly, it stopped working – ha! I’m not sure what the issue was, as I hadn’t changed anything (the tension, sewing foot pressure, and needle were all the same). After a couple of thread breakages, I decided to switch to 50wt.
First, threading my machine with my fingers bandaged up is quite the challenge – lol! So, the switch was partly out of concern for my machine and partly to avoid frustration.
Consider the quilting direction
The direction of my quilting lines took me a moment to decide upon. I had my wall hanging basted and still stuck to the floor when I opted to add my base plotted quilting line. I wasn’t thinking about the direction of how I was planning on hanging my quilted wall hanging when I was thinking about where to add that line in. I stood back and found a straight-ish line that I could follow and went from there.
The only thing is, it was the wrong direction of how I initially intended to hang her.
I spent several minutes humming and hawing about whether to change the quilted line directions.
This led me to look at the composition from a different angle and I LOVED what I was seeing.
The moral of the story is: be open to changing directions!
Binding
Scrappy binding
After piecing my back together with my fabric remnants, I was running out of fabric fast.
The only one that I really had left as an option was purple, but I just wasn’t feeling that colour. It was just too bold and dark for the feeling I was going for. So, I turned to my trusty binding remnant storage box and found some fun options that coordinated nicely with the backing.
Faced binding
How to actually bind her was another moment of pause as I contemplated my options.
I was tempted to machine bind her, but my machine binding skills need some work and I didn’t really want to be testing them on this lil’ cutie.
Since I love the clean look of faced binding and felt it matched the best with the design, that’s what I ultimately opted for. The first time I ever tried facing a quilt, it was Jenny’s tutorial that I turned to. Super clear and easy to follow. It ends up incorporating Purl Soho’s basic binding technique, which is also very straightforward. I modify the latter to incorporate a mitred binding join, which I show you in my basic Quilt Binding Tutorial Part 1, but otherwise, I stick to the steps they outline.
Faced binding isn’t difficult to achieve but it does require a little more preparation, which felt extra fiddly with my fingers bandaged up. This was also true for big stitch hand binding the second side down. I opted for 12wt Aurifil Thread as it adds a lovely textural element that you know I’m a sucker for and couldn’t resist adding in 😊
Lessons learned
Throughout this piecing adventure, my quilt composition took a few different turns that I didn’t expect!
- I giggle at myself with how I went from planning to focus on the orange to loving the purple while piecing the blocks, and then swinging back to the orange when it came time to piece the composition. Just goes to show you how flexible and unpredictable improv can be!
- While I was frustrated about my physical limitations, I love that I still made it work and created something that I’m proud of.
- It was fun revisiting machine quilting with 12wt. I know that with more practice, this will become a fun technique to turn to. You can see my first attempt in this needle-turn appliqué project I did.
For more 30 Days of Improv QAL check out the following posts:
Well done on sticking with the 30 Days of Improv QAL and finishing your own composition. I hope you’ve discovered just how freeing and creatively inspiring improv quilting can be. For more insight on improv quilting, be sure to check out Improv Behind the Scenes!
What was your favourite part of pulling your improv composition together? Mine was the colour focus I brought in for both my composition and improv quilt backing! Share yours in the comments below.
xo,
Shannon
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