Lily Improv

Are you familiar with Linda and Laura Kemshall? They’re a mother-daughter duo who make fabulous art – in fabric and paper, and who have a weekly newsletter. Recently, they featured this photo. Isn’t it lovely?

I was enamored with the colors of the lilies and wrote to ask if I could use it for a quilt’s inspiration. Linda had taken the photo and she gave me permission to use it.

I pulled out pretty much all of my pink and green fabrics and began to make selections. I knew I’d also want to add in some grey, too.

(Yes, I have a lot of fat quarters!)

Have you ever made an improv quilt? The critical thing is to get the colors and their proportions the way you want them at the start. Then, you can sew and slash and piece to your heart’s content. (It turns out that I missed the mark, but more on that later.)

To start, I cut a bunch of fabric rectangles. For the critical pinks I cut them about the size of a piece of typing paper. The whites, greys, and greens were only about 1/4 that size. I also sorted through my scraps and pulled out the pieces that would work. Then, everything got stacked into contrasting pairs and taken to the sewing machine.

The scraps had wonky shapes, but I just trimmed them to straight lines.

Now that I think of it, I guess that’s the crux of this improv method: sew things together and then trim them.

This is what my blocks looked like, above, after that first round of piecing. Everything is large and chunky. But, I knew I’d be GREATLY modifying them so I was pretty happy with them. (Maybe too much peach, though.) Then, the fun began.

Sometimes I sliced across seams and rejoined them with mismatched alignment.

And I began to add grey to some of the oddly shaped blocks.

This was just the beginning of the fun. Watch my next post to see how things progress.

Ellen Lindner
P.S. You’ll definitely want to check in on the Kemshall’s website, Design Matters TV, and sign up for their mailing list.
P.P.S. You can see some of my other improv quilts in the links below.