The Wonky Improv-Curve Quilt is Complete!

As per my normal M.O., I'm posting WAY too many photos.  I got this quilt back from the long-arm quilter in early September, and just had time to admire the lovely quilting before I left town on a baseball tour.

Then when I got back, it was time to pack for a trip to France.   Travel is great, but so is being home.

I hand-stitched the binding on this quilt. Something I rarely do. I'm going to enter this in a quilt show, and I thought hand-stitching was the way to go.

I always add a pop of fabric from the quilt to the binding.  This time, I added two different fabrics, just because I wanted to!

May your bobbins always be full,

The Wonky Improv-Curve Quilt

I took these photos a week ago.  I've been so busy that I forgot to post them.  This is the first quilt I've had custom quilted.  The lovely Georganna Hawley quilted it for me.  She was well recommended and I had a chance to meet her at Quiltcon this year.  We live about 3 hours apart, that's how you measure distance in California, so the quilt traveled via US mail.

I'm in love with the result.  I haven't decided on the binding, yet, so I can't mark this complete!

May your bobbins always be full,

The Wonky Improv-Curve Quilt Top and Back

This is what I came up with for the quilt back.  I kept it random and ended up with two pink rectangles together!  That's how you know it's random!

I've decided to us a Long Arm Quilter that I met a Quiltcon in February because she does custom quilting.  Before I met her, another quilter from the Ventura MQG had highly recommended her.  It's always great to have an independent recommendation.

Since I'm not much of a leave it to chance kind of gal, in spite of the evidence in the quilt back, I came up with a plan for the quilting and I'm going to let the quilter "run with it".  She has a busy schedule, so I won't have it back until August.

May your bobbins always be full,

The Wonky Improv-Curve Quilt Top is finished

Photo overload.  The quilt top was actually finished this morning, which was lucky because it's a stupid hot today.  We topped out at 101 degrees at 11 AM.  I got out to take these photos earlier.  I really love all the movement in this Wonky Improv-Curve Quilt top.

I've been working on the quilt back, so it should be finished by tomorrow.  I'm in a quandary about how to have this quilted.  My LAQ doesn't do custom and I think this deserves some custom work.  I'll need to come up with a plan before I send it off to someone.

May your bobbins always be full,

Making progress in the Wonky Improv-Curve Quilt Top

I have been a busy bee.  After I selected these fabrics for a Wonky Improv-Curve quilt, there was lots to do.

First I cut a 16.6 inch square from each fabric.  Then I stacked them and drew a curved line on the top fabric.  The stack was too thick to use a rotary cutter, so I cut the curve the old fashioned way and using scissors.  Then I stitched together pairs of mismatched fabric.

Next, I drew the second curve and repeated the process.  You can see that the blocks were not laying absolutely flat, but that wasn't a problem until the third curve was stitched in.

I thought of a couple of solutions, but decided to "sleep" on it.  I've always been able to problem solve while sleeping.  I work up this morning with my solution.  I did a trial to make sure I'd be happy with the result.

First I sliced two blocks in two.  You can see that the cut edges ended up curved!  I used the top and bottom of each piece to make a straight line, and get rid of the curve.  Then I joined one half of each block, to make two new blocks.  I trued them up to 13.75 inches square, to get rid of all those jagged edges.

And these two blocks are the result.

I performed the slicing, trimming and re-joining process on the remainder of the blocks, but this time I didn't work with two blocks at a time, so the placement was more random.  Above isn't the final layout, but it's close.

This is a photo of the instructions that were given on making a Wonky Curves block.  I started with smaller squares because most of the fabric I pulled was half yard cuts, so no 20 inch squares.  But, hey, it's improv!

May your bobbins always be full,

A New Challenge, Improv-Curve Piecing

At this months' meeting of the Temecula Valley MQG, my friend Susan gave a demo on  improv-curve piecing.  The demo was very inspiring and I'm going to give it a try.

About a month ago I received notice of the colors for the 2017 Charity Quilt Challenge.  My guild is doing a charity quilt, but not the challenge.  I ordered the solid colors that were part of the challenge.  The colors were a starting point and they encouraged you to pull prints that went along with the solids.

These are the solids.  I thought they were very pretty, and a definite challenge.

These are the prints I pulled from my stash.

And here's everything together.  I'm not going to do the MQG Challenge, instead, I'm going to try improv-curve piecing!!  Yikes, wish me luck.

It feels good to get back to sewing/quilting.

May your bobbins always be full,