I bought 4 yards of the beautiful Spotted Graffiti fabric designed by Marcia Derse a little while ago. I just loved the colors and texture of the browns and blues. I was saving it for a background for one of my garden ladies, but didn't use it for that series. So, I cut off 2 yards to save, and used the rest for an improv quilt. Not having any idea where I was heading, I pulled fabrics that went with the colors of the fabric.
I recently made some improv quilts using solids and hand dyed fabric, and I wanted to see how the process would work with patterned fabric. A Duckworth type of improv block seemed to be the best idea. So, I cut strips out of the turquoise and light tans and light blues and sewed them together in log cabin style. I made blocks that were about 9" (or so) square and sewed them together to end up with 15" square blocks of improv pieced fabric.
I layered those with the 15" squares of the background fabric and made initial curved improv cuts. I knew that the improv pieced fabric needed to have a strip of plain color between it and the patterned background, so I sewed either dark brown or medium blue to the inner piece. Then, I made a second cut on the background and pieced it together.
I ended up with 4 blocks that had predominately the pieced fabric on the larger outer section, and a few more of the ones with the pieced fabric on the inner, smaller section. At some point, I needed to make more of the pieced fabric, and I knew that these didn't need to be too big, so I made four of those and just trimmed them off to make a corner area. These were then pieced into the background fabric.
I tried several layouts and ended up with the third one.
The blocks are all different sizes, so I sewed them together into vertical rows and trimmed them to fit. In the pictures below, you can see where I had to trim to get a nice vertical row.
It's definitely wonky! I'm thinking about adding some of my signature applique circles. We'll see!
I hope you like it so far!
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