All finished!  This is Tipsy, an improv quilt made entirely without rulers (except for the backing and binding) and inspired by the second score of The Improv Handbook for Modern Quilters.  Sherri prompts us to reflect and share about our finished works along these lines:

My intention was to work in a moody palette with dusky purples, lots of somber grays, dull browns and sharp black.  But I let in more sunshine that I expected!  The yellow really stands out among all those urban tones.  I am definitely happy with the finished color mix, but the upbeat finish took me by surprise.  Maybe the lesson here is that a little bit of joy can go a long way...

  Working with pieced "fabric" (i.e. cutting shapes from string sheets) makes for a quilt that looks quite complex for the amount of time it required.  Also, the stripes bring a directionality to everything you cut, creating the opportunity for so much movement.  Since I'm drawn to layers of interest and movement in quilt design, I can see myself using this string sheet score again.

I'm pleased that I took on the challenge of working with triangles, despite the ruler-free paradigm.  It was very satisfying to use my angled sewing skills to playfully preserve points.  If this is a skill you'd like to hone, I'm glad to say I'll be encoring my Angled online sewing course early in the new year.  Hope you'll join us!

I'm also pleased that this quilt feels entirely mine, without any hints of doubt as with Score #1.  The subtitle of Score #2 is "Doing It My Way."   Glad my work fit the bill!

I'd like to see a little more negative space above the black/white small triangles row and a little less negative space between the large and smaller tipsy diamonds.  I was so eager to sew it all together and see what I had created that I probably went too quickly during the row-joining stage.

{Next Steps} The next score in the book is a round robin.  I love the overarching concept of that exercise, which is that improv is a "yes, and" conversation.  That's something I practice when I rarely (if ever) edit out any piece I cut or sew during improv, preferring to challenge myself to make it all work.  For the Tipsy quilt I even used up all my scraps on the quilt back!

However, I don't feel up to organizing a round robin at the moment.  Instead, I'm going to move on to Score #4, which is about "Letting Go of Expectation."  Can you see why I'm working through this book?  Improv is quilting therapy.

Join in if you need some!