a little Improv

The sickies that have been going around, finally caught up to us this week. Today the littles and I stayed in our pajamas til lunch time and spent a good part of the morning playing with noodles and food coloring.

Have you heard of Whipstitch's blog series, Sewing With Kids? The first lesson was dying and stringing noodle necklaces. Classic, yes? Since we homeschool, this activity was new to my kiddos. Like Deborah pointed out, it did require patience - it takes awhile for those noodles to take the dye (Aria says 11 minutes, to be precise) and then they must dry. But, really, this was just right for the slow kind of morning we needed.

After lunch, during the hallowed "rest time", I worked on a project for my super secret Spicing up the Kitchen swap partner. Here are the fabrics I pulled. For starters I'm making improv blocks. This is my very first time doing a self-directed improv design. I'm feeling unsure of myself, but excited! Elizabeth Hartman's recent series of posts showing her improv style play-by-play came along at just the right time, because I already knew I should do some improv for this swap partner.

Thanks to Elizabeth's inspiration, I decided to start by narrowing down the fabrics I wanted to use for the first block. And, I also fussy cut the Owl & the Pussycat (which is still available at Sew Love Fabrics!) in the sizes that I wanted to use.

This is when Elizabeth typically sketches out her block concept. I can't imagine taking the time to do that! I did get a basic idea of how I'd put things together. I was thinking 2 or 3 columns with the moon at top left and the boat at bottom right. But, that was it. I was ready to get stitchin!

I used some solids to frame the fussy cut pieces and began building out the columns. With the first additions of fabric I kept the angles pretty square. But after that I started trimming at slight angles for effect.

Then I realized that a sliver of the Heather Ross fishy print would be fun below the boat with some added blue.

From there I just kept adding until my columns looked long enough. I decided 2 was all I needed. The finished block is about 13" square. It's not fabulous, but it's pretty cute. And, the process was so relaxed! I think I like this kind of improv that centers around "story" prints.

Liam had left his noodle necklace on the table when he went to rest time. Made my smile how it matches today's block. Life's so funny like that.