Quilt Improv

Today I’m excited to be part of the blog tour for Lucie Summers‘ book Quilt Improv  from F & W Media. I ordered this book the moment it was published and I have been meaning to post about it, so I’m glad to finally sit down and tell you about it! I’ve been a big fan of Lu’s screenprinted fabric designs for years and I was thrilled when I discovered that we were both designing for Moda a few years ago. She’s hilarious in person and I love the work she’s been doing with quilt improvisation.

Quilt Improv first teaches various techniques that you can use in your improvisational quilts, with simple visual instructions as shown below. Above, you can see the mini-quilts that Lucie made using the techniques covered in the book. Once you have learned the techniques, you can move on to make the quilts.

For each of the twelve quilts in the book, Lucie talks about her inspiration, followed by the process from sketching and planning to execution. She loosely plans her work before she begins, but is free to make changes during the process; this freedom is the fundamental key to making improvisational quilts. It allows you the ability to be creative and spontaneous, add new colors or patterns, make changes to your layout or add a new design element to your quilt. Here’s her Bricks and Fences quilt below:

And a bit of the inspiration and process for the design:

You can make the quilts as she shows them in the book or you can use the book as a foundation for your own designs. For those of you who may not yet feel comfortable with improvisational style, you will get instructions to make the quilts as shown, but you can add your own fabrics and color palette to create something wholly unique. The photography in the book is beautiful and the instructions are clear and simple.

So step outside your quilt box and make something interesting! Get Quilt Improv here, head over to Lucie’s blog for a chance to win a book and a mini-quilt, and take a look at her Etsy shop. See the other stops on the blog tour here.