Hello!

Over the weekend I read Sherri Lynn Wood’s book, The Improv Handbook for Modern Quilters: A Guide to Creating, Quilting, and Living Courageously. The book gave me some inspiration and ideas to try. I won’t go super in depth about the book but the author talks about trusting yourself in your cutting and getting rid of the ruler. So I tried that and it worked out on the block below.

I decided I was going to do a variation on a block known as pick up sticks but without the ruler. I wanted to start with a different block than a plain square and to show what the block looked like before I cut it corner to corner. I didn’t do too bad. You can see there are parts that aren’t straight but that’s the nature of improv, making do with what you have to work with and letting go.

After I cut the block on the diagonal and inserted my first strip, I felt the strip was too wide for the block proportions. I went ahead and finished the block to see what it would look like. Things I could change are to make my center square bigger and use the same width strips or make the width of the strips smaller. Maybe a little of both. The center square gets a little lost.

If you’re interested in improv, I do recommend Sherri Lynn Wood’s book mentioned above. I’m going to try some of the experiments in the book and see what I come up with. She gives guidelines for each project and no two finished projects are the same.

Happy creating!

Camille