What a journey!
This quilt started with Tara Faughnan’s six months online “Blocks” class in the fall of 2023 and into 2024. Tara presents beautiful fabric palettes, but this time I had the idea that I might want to make an improv quilt with my work in this class–so I chose a large palette that I kept intact for the six months. The palette, I thought, might be able to provide some coherence down the road.
I posted about the blocks along the way so many of you saw that process–which was so much fun. After the class ended, the blocks sat on my design wall for months as I moved around the larger pieces and tried to make an improv quilt come together.
Finally, I had what I liked. Here’s the first view of the resulting top. I used Kona silver as my field fabric. I hated the borders though–and there were places where some adjustments were needed to make the quilt lie flat. The first step was to take off the borders.
![](https://kitanosumika.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Improv-Blocks-is-Done.jpeg)
Here is the top without the borders. Yes, I liked this top much better now. And while I had it on the floor I measured and corrected to make the top absolutely square before putting it on the longarm.
![](https://kitanosumika.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/1717689699_861_Improv-Blocks-is-Done.jpeg)
I wanted to try using my longarm to do straight line quilting down the length of the quilt, so I put it on lengthwise–and made sure my machine, with the channel locks set in place–would quilt a true line with the correct distance between lines every time.
Yeah! That was working really well…
![](https://kitanosumika.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/1717689701_121_Improv-Blocks-is-Done.jpeg)
…until it didn’t. My channel locks were not holding properly.
So, I took the quilt off the longarm, took out two lines of stitching, and set up all sorts of tables and an ironing board around my domestic machine so I could finish the quilting there. It took three days! (Meanwhile, my Innova dealer was already coming to take the wheels off my long arm as it was too high for me, so I put in a call to him about the channel lock issue. Yes, he came and all is well again.)
The problem with using a domestic on a big quilt with straight line stitching is that the fabric can (and does) get out of square as the walking foot pushes the fabric in a way that the longarm does not. But, I coped with trimming, and the quilt is…GORGEOUS!
Here it is on the floor, but this pic is distorting the quilting I think.
![](https://kitanosumika.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/1717689703_221_Improv-Blocks-is-Done.jpeg)
So I put it on the design wall upstairs to try for a better picture.
![](https://kitanosumika.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/1717689704_51_Improv-Blocks-is-Done.jpeg)
For the backing, I found a gorgeous coral from Figo at Five Eighth Seams that works really well with the Kona coral in my palette. And it makes this quilt I already love so much so lively and fun.
![](https://kitanosumika.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/1717689706_618_Improv-Blocks-is-Done.jpeg)
I will need to wash it to get out all the glue in the blocks. And I already washed the backing and all the stash fabrics. I want to show it to my two local quilt groups first though. I am a little hesitant about the washing as I used color catchers with the backing, and the dye did run more than a little. So, when I wash this quilt, I will use lots and lots of color catcher cloths in the wash and probably cold water.
There are two projects on the design wall and ironed fabrics waiting to be used in a third quilt. One of these projects is a leader/ender project, and that is working out well in lots of way to be shared later.
“Improv Blocks” is begging to be touched and used:
![](https://kitanosumika.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/1717689708_99_Improv-Blocks-is-Done.jpeg)