Improvising Progress

The definition of improvisation is to use what you have. I don't know how you define improvisational quilting but I define it as not using templates, you don't know exactly what you are going to do when you start, you have a vision but you don't know how you are going to realize that vision.

Jacquie has asked us to share our process of improvising.

My grandson has a huge whale on his wall painted by his other grandmother. He was moved to his big boy bed and I wanted to make him a whale quilt for his new bed. I found this picture and thought I could do that.








I pieced a small whale from looking at the picture. I used a lot of the ideas that Belinda used in making the small stars. The corners are done the same way. I made four big whales and I loved the way it looked . I put his name at the top using the same fabric that I used for the whales. I am not usually concerned too much about the size of a quilt but I wanted this one bigger than a crib quilt. I tried out several borders.














I loved the color but this drowns out the whales.















This still isn't quite right. It just does not speak to me. I searched in my stash and found some cute whale fabric with the same colors.














This is better and I really like the whale fabric. It is the same tone as the whales I made but I still need something else. My aunt loves square in a square so I called her and talked to her. She reminded me that Gwen Marston has great section on square in a square in her Liberated Quilting book. I found some blue fabric in my stash and made a square in a square with the whale fabric.

















Much better I think I am on to something!!
















Here is where I am now and I really like what I have done. I am going to do some more square in a squares for the bottom. I may use some of the other ocean life fabric I have and to borrow another idea from my aunt maybe use other blues. I like the subtle differences of color.

For my other improvisation I am to do red/aqua and I am going to try to work on that this weekend. Our new baby is scheduled to come on Monday and as you can imagine we are all very excited and anxious to get our hands on him.