So Many Strips

All the applique is finished up and now the borders are attached onto the first Improv. Strips quilt. I needed this one to be a completed top so that I could use it in the demonstration for sandwiching and pinning a quilt. Not that I'm really in the mood to start stitching on this quite yet, but it makes sense to show them the hand quilting stuff on a similar design.

Improv. Strip Quilt #1 top is done!

After all the angst about making this quilt wider than it was tall, I rather like how the deeper borders at top and bottom corral the strips. It makes me smile to see the last little bits added on at the corners. Waste not, want not!

No Wasted Pieces is the new name. Of course!

Or whatever. I was soooo tempted to leave off the 'ces' on the word pieces. How about 'no wasted pie' instead? But yeah. That would have been just a little too much. My husband and daughters weird sense of humor is obviously affecting me now that I'm the only one who rolls her eyes. Definitely missing our oldest daughter these days!

A little bit of applique can go a long ways....

After liking, then not liking, then making plans for adding applique, I'm back to liking the Improv. Strips #2 quilt. Maybe just exactly the way it is. No borders. No added applique. Just this.

Improv. Strip Quilt #2 {Blue} might be done

Maybe even almost loving it. Hmm...

Loving the sparky strips of gold

Could it be added to my skimpy pile of manly quilt top options? I'm wondering.

Kind of a summer day, pond water, blue skies
sort of quilt

I played with the applique idea regardless, just because I had been thinking about it for so long. I had this idea of a stacked, layer after layer of a somewhat formal looking flower. Yep. Spent a couple of hours on the layers and then... it looked a little too feminine. Too suggestive. Ick. So I pulled off about six layers and thought perhaps this would work.

Thinking about an applique addition

Then I switched up the leaves to something darker and auditioned it again. Yeah. It's not quite right. I'm not sure what's going to happen here now and like I said, it might just be better without any applique at all. Time to let it simmer.

Or not?

Last nights quilt meeting was a lot of fun! These are six of the ladies who have made it through to quilt top stage {or almost} and I couldn't be prouder. They have really been working hard to get through all the phases up till now. Two more gals couldn't make the meeting last night and then there is one more straggler who is waaay behind, but still wants to keep in contact and perhaps move along at a slower pace. Three total drop-outs for various reasons that I don't think had anything to do with me. Not too shabby! Right? 

I love the different personalities everyone brought to the quilt project. So interesting to make similar but different quilt tops all at the same time. I didn't even end up showing them my completed Improv. Quilt Top #2 because we had so much information to get through and really, this night was about them.*Whew  It feels so good to see them at this stage and see that yes, what I have been showing them {and teaching} actually works in reality, not just theory! Can not even tell you how happy this makes me seeing their smiles!

These ladies did so good!

I've been working on a little tiny bit of applique lately {such as the 'no wasted pieces stuff', but otherwise, have been practically drowning myself in strip sewing. After I made up my mind to play with the class demo strips, it almost became a compulsion to finish it out. Just wanted to make the effort and then throw all the little bits away and be done.

Calling this one 'Practice'

I really thought there would be more sashing or border work between the rows as the quilt started doing the medallion thing, but it just never looked right after the middle portion was sewn together. Okay, that's fine. 

I played and played one afternoon with the sets of strips, mixing up the colors in the first two outside borders. Played with the scale by folding the auditioned rows under seeing if skinnier rows looked better or not. Finally got a plan figured out and then, at row two, totally forgot that I intended to make the top and bottom portions be about three and a half inches longer so as to end up with a rectangular quilt.*sigh  I couldn't believe it when I laid out my finished quilt and saw that somehow I had ended up working on auto-pilot and yep! Cut and sewn the outside rows an identical width all around the quilt. Uggh... 

The third outside border doesn't look as
awful as I expected

I went to bed that night pretty irritated with myself and disappointed with the quilt overall. It could have looked so good! But then I got to thinking and you know what? This quilt is not anything special. It's not something that I've spent months thinking about and wondering how to instill a certain 'vibe' and look into. It is exactly what the name implies. Practice. 

So I laid it out on the floor again and took all the cut off portions and started to play again. Eventually I decided to trim those shorter portions down to the {almost} shortest length and make two long border pieces out of those. Whatever that size ended up being? That was it, gonna have to work. Only had to use the seam ripper on two different block units and replace super short strips with a new one.

Looking much softer in the right light...

And that was that. Instead of two strippy borders around the center of the quilt, the top and bottom ended up with three. Wallah! Super interesting quilt to play with just in making-do, finding good spots for terribly blah fabrics, how the look changed so quickly by reducing strip lengths in a border. That sort of thing. Fun to pursue but now I'm done, almost exhausted with it all. Ready to move on to more compelling colors of fabric and do my own thing again! Or is this maybe more my thing than I realize? Just winging it and figuring out how to make things work? Whatever. It definitely doesn't hurt anything to try!