30 Days of Improv QAL

The 30 Days of Improv Quilt Along is an annual quilt along (QAL) hosted by Shannon Fraser and Amanda Carye where each week of a month, quilters are challenged to sew an improvisational block each day following prompts in the QAL. Weekly prompts typically focus on a shape: stripes, ‘L’, triangles, curves, etc.. Each day of the week challenges you to play with the focus shape in a different way.

2022 was the first year I participated, this was also the first quilt I ever made improvisationally. The pink color palette was my own challenge to use colors I don’t normally gravitate towards. I sewed the quilt blocks together in order of construction - you can see the evolution of shapes from, stripes, to triangles, to curves. The backing was also constructed improvisationally with leftover pieces from the project and ice-dyed fabric. I used a walking-foot quilting design from the book Walk 2.0 to finish this piece. Quilting thread was vintage polyester yarn-like embroidery thread.

In 2023, the entire quilt is constructed from vintage, secondhand, and stash fabrics - no new fabrics were purchased. I also chose a couple patterned fabrics to see how these affected composition. I had one ‘rule’: if you slice through an already pieced block or area, you must insert a strip of accent fabric somewhere within that block. I spent time contemplating block arrangement, looking for areas where the darkest and lightest valued fabrics clustered. Where the white fabrics merged, I hand-quilted a diagonal grid with 12wt white thread. I free-motion quilted the remaining areas using my domestic machine.