Inspiring Improv Book Tour

I love a bit of improv, or ‘playtime in the sewing room’ as I like to think of it, so when Nick Ball of Quilts From the Attic asked if I would join the book tour for his new book ‘Inspiring Improv’ I said ‘yes please!’

Published by Lucky Spool, Inspiring Improv is a technique based book that is crammed full of ideas and beautiful quilts. It’s very well written with the right balance of personal anecdotes and invaluable advice and information. Nick has chapters on finding inspiration, colour choices and fabric pulls, quilting, binding and tools, before a really comprehensive techniques section that covers 5 important improv styles: curves, inserts, rings, slabs and stacks.

I particularly like his myth busting ‘golden rules’ chapter – I pretty much agree with everything he says and it was good to read this sensible advice in a new book!

I also absolutely love the photography and styling! Even Nick’s cute wee pug Samuel gets in on the act.

These are two of my favourite quilts from the book, Foliage on the left and Dessert Dwellings on the right.

I’ve long admired all of Nick’s Triangle quilts so I decided to have a go at this technique.

I am very comfortable with improv and cutting and piecing by eye, though Nick does advocate the use of rulers to make these little blocks (something my students will be pleased to hear!). I had such fun making these little ‘teepees’ as my hubby immediately named them.

In my last post I told you about the new Dashwood Studio line designed by Sarah Ashford. This is the Great British Quilter Back to Basics collection which will be out in January. Sarah gave me a small amount of each fabric to play with and I really enjoyed using these bright happy colours with this quick and easy technique.

When I had used most of the fabrics up I started to organise the triangles into a pleasing arrangement. I then sewed together the first few rows, adding extra strips to bring smaller blocks up to size.

Other areas were constructed as blocks rather than rows until I had 3 distinct areas (above right). I needed just one more tall triangle before I could put it all together.

As well as the fabric line Sarah has also produced a coordinating collection of Aurifil threads that will be launched at Festival of Quilts in August (she is a busy girl!). The collection box contains 20 gorgeous 12wt cotton threads. We will be stocking these at myBearpaw and they will be coming in to stock imminently, so watch this space for more news!

And I’ll come clean here, I’m actually doing a bit of multi-tasking with this project as Sarah asked if I could make something using the fabric and threads for the Aurifil booth at FOQ. So I thought I would combine two birds with one stone!

Luckily I had a few of the right shades in my Aurifil 12wt stash and I decided to use these to machine quilt with my walking foot again. I tried this successfully a few weeks back with my Flower Teacup pillow.

As before I used a 50wt thread in the bobbin and a size 90 needle. It worked like a dream, with the thread only breaking once during the whole process.

I had a little play with the curvy grid, making the lines splay out from the corners and changing the thread colour after 3 or 4 lines.

I’m really liking this heavier effect and I think it suits this sort of top especially.

When my hubby saw the finished quilt he said ‘Teepee City!’ so that’s what I am calling this mini quilt.

I used a faced binding with mitred corers using this tutorial from Papper Sax Sten. I do like a faced binding on a modern mini.

This quilt ended up around 27″.

Overall this was a very absorbing little project (I worked well on in to the evening making the top as I was enjoying it so much) that helped me come down after a very stimulating weekend retreat!

I would thoroughly recommend Nick’s book, it has all you need to get you started with improv piecing in a logical structured way. Or, if like me you already love it, then you will find new inspirations and ideas for your next improv quilt.

Get your hands on a copy from any good booksellers and check out the other stops on this book tour by visiting Nick’s IG feed here.