Artful Improv – Permission to Play! – A Review
August 21, 2024
Hi!
This post is late today because I’ve been playing… Playing with Improv piecing to make rule-free quilt blocks!
I’ve just finished Cindy Grisdela’s “Artful Improv – Permission to Play!” course from Creative Spark, and I’m hooked! I love the freedom of just putting bits and pieces together and seeing what I can make, but a little bit of structure, and some forward planning can make the difference between a mess, and a masterpiece.
Cindy’s easy to understand course provides a framework to play within, and her hints and tips on how to select colors are great. She looks at which colors and why, and discusses how to combine prints and solids for best effect.
She believes there’s no place for the ‘Quilt Police’ with this style of quilt-making – there’s no mistakes and nothing is ‘wrong’, as they’re all just design opportunities. My kind of quilting indeed!! 🙂
This course also includes a downloadable copy of Cindy’s “Artful Improv” book too, with more detail and quilty eye candy to inspire you.
In this course, Cindy covers five different types of improv pieced blocks. You don’t ‘have’ to do any of them, but these really are the basic block builders that you can use singly or in combination to create your own improv quilt designs.
She starts with Angled Stripes –
These can be chain pieced easily, and used as blocks themselves, or cut and re-purposed to add to other blocks.
Then there’s the Improv Log Cabin Block –
Cindy shows how to build your log cabin improv blocks, and there’s plenty of tips about sizing and adding variation.
Next is Fearless Curves –
I love, love, love this style of template-free curved piecing, and I think it looks great in her quilts too.
And then you can build on this technique to make multiple cut curves…
Another effective piecing technique is Insets, and Cindy demonstrates just how effective these can be, especially when used in the background or to frame another block.
A few of Cindy’s Improv quilts –
Her Red Rover quilt uses angled stripes, improv log cabin blocks and curved border strips.
Shades of Autumn, above, is an example of using the Curved Stripes as an interior border that gives the eye a place to rest.
These long curved border strip units work well in landscape style quilts too.
After demonstrating how to construct these improv blocks, Cindy also covers how to play with the arrangement of your blocks, and how this can impact your finished design. She says to remember to use “What If?” as you’re arranging your design – ask What If? to help you vary block placement. Should you rotate a block, or add or remove colors?
The example used a bunch of angled stripe blocks. Arrange like this?
Or is rotating some better?
What about adding some different blocks for a contrast?
Or really mixing it up – to great effect.
And to finish, rather than just letting you “quilt as you like”, Cindy shared a comprehensive “how to” for several of her favourite quilting designs, and how these designs can enhance your improv quilt too.
Like I said, I’ve been playing today with a handful of leftover scraps from a new quilt project, and here’s my efforts, from following Cindy’s guidelines:
I have a plan for these blocks, and I’ll share some new pattern ideas on the blog next week.
Cindy Grisdela’s “Artful Improv Quilting” does indeed give you Permission to Play, and it provides the techniques and framework you need to confidently create your own improv blocks and quilts. You can find this course on the Creative Spark platform, and if you’re interested in Improv quilting, it’s definitely worth doing.
We are lucky enough to have one of Cindy’s courses to give away for Free too, so to be in the running, please comment below with what you love about Improv quilt making, and what you’d love to learn, and we’ll draw one lucky winner randomly next Tuesday 27th August.
Have a great week, and good luck!
13 responses to “Artful Improv – Permission to Play! – A Review”
Leave a Reply
Welcome to our
Online Quilt Magazine Blog
Read through to discover hints and tips, articles from magazine contributors, sneak peeks and more!
Please enter your email address in the box below to receive notification of
new posts by email.
How to combine colours patterns and designs to produce a masterpiece rather than a mess!
how unstressful it would be to combine blocks made from scraps.
I love how modern it looks. I would like to learn how to be more spontaneous with my designs.
How fantastic to find a course that speaks to me and my love of color and scraps. Just checking out Jodi’s had given do many ideas but I’d love to take the course to learn curves.
This looks like such fun! Creating something adventurous rather than aiming for precision is just what I need.
I have never tried this but am so wanting to. Then create a masterpiece!
I love this idea of using up your scraps to create something that is unique and definitely one of a kind.
It is also a good excuse to go buy more fabric as I’m sure there would be a color I don’t have and would “need” it for the project’ I hope you pick me!
I’d love to learn how to relax and just do whatever comes to mind.
We create quilts for kids in hospital at our craft group. It would be very handy to know how to utilise every scrap of material creatively to more fully utilise our resources.
Would be so good to learn to use scraps effectively. I hate not being able to use up some of my really beautiful fabrics.
I would love to try this….always willing to try new patterns..
Always a pleasure to learn new things…
This is another way of using up scrap fabrics. As I a.fairly new to quilting I’d love to give it a go.