Slice of Improv with Foothill Quilters Guild

This past week, I trekked up to Auburn, CA to visit the Foothill Quilters Guild.  En route I visited a few local quilt shops including Thistle Dew Quilt Shoppe and Whistle Stop Quilt & Sew Shop and found some fun fabrics that had to come home with me!!  I also ran into a few familiar faces, which was a fun treat for me!!  At the Monday night guild meeting, I presented my Challenge Yourself! lecture/trunk show.  In some ways I felt like I was preaching to the choir as they had a fabulous quilt challenge already in full swing:  Participating members received a bag containing an unwanted bridesmaid dress that they were then tasked to turn into new fiber art!  What a super fun challenge idea and I saw two of the mystery bridesmaid dresses revealed that evening and would love to see what becomes of them!!  

Challenge Yourself!

The Challenge Yourself! theme continued into the next day's workshop:  Slice of Improv.  I have so much fun teaching this workshop and nudging quilters outside of their comfort zones...and this group of quilters were an adventurous lot!  They really embraced the improvisational nature and each added their own fun personality into their group of improvisationally pieced blocks!!  Some were fairly new to improvisational piecing and really stretched themselves as they tried the various techniques.  Others were accustomed to improvisation and created personal challenges for themselves by trying some of the more advanced techniques and/or combining techniques.

Not only were they adventurous, but they were pretty productive group as well, churning out quite a few finished blocks!!  When it came to background fabrics, this group was pretty evenly split:  dark and light colored!!

Wow!  These bright colored scraps just pop against the dark colored backgrounds!!  One quilter brought a wonderful pile of ombre fabrics that just glowed against the dark green mottled background fabrics and each block looked like a neon sign!!  Another quilter brought a fun assortment of black and white stripes & prints (leftovers from a Freddy Moran workshop) and incorporated a few pops of color!!  Two quilters brought a variety of grey fabrics, both in solid and prints, that they stacked, sliced and then shuffled to create dynamic backgrounds for their colorful inserts to truly shine!!

Scraps that Pop Against a Dark Background

The other half of the class chose lighter colored backgrounds and I just love the subtle beauty of their blocks!!  Cream colored prints with an assortment of brown, pink and peach prints made for a very beautiful color palette.  Another member brought a bright colored jellyroll and a cream colored Grunge print for her background.  I love how she pieced schnibbles from the selvedge for a fun detail!!  Another participant brought a rich assortment of silks and other non-traditional quilting fabrics, and chose to work on larger blocks.  Each block was truly a work of art complete with beautiful texture!!  Last but not least is a really cool combination of blues and greens, with equally exciting lines, curves and angles!!

Subtle But Equally Brilliant Blocks!

The day flew by quickly as we enjoyed the freeing, forgiving and FUN nature of improvisational piecing!!  Many thanks to the Foothill Quilters Guild for an absolutely fabulous visit!!