There is a particular pleasure in improv quilting, the sense that a piece is finding its own shape as you go. In this video, Cheryl Arkison makes a point worth holding onto, that the wonderful irregularity of good improv is a deliberate choice rather than a loosening of the hand. Working without a pattern in front of you does not mean working without judgement, and a few steady decisions are exactly what keep an improv quilt feeling alive rather than careless.
Here is why this one is worth watching:
- A seam allowance you hold to. Cheryl's first rule is consistency. Your seam allowance does not need to match any particular figure, it simply needs to stay the same from the first seam to the last, so that everything comes together the way you intend.
- Pressing with intention. She presses by lifting the iron and setting it down rather than dragging it across the piecing, and she does this every few seams instead of leaving it all until the end, which stops the improv shapes from distorting as they grow.
- Trimming late, and on purpose. This is the decision that repays the most attention. Cheryl holds off on trimming until late in the process, once all the blocks are made, because only then can she see how they sit together and judge how much she actually wants to take away. She reaches for the word trim rather than square up quite deliberately, since the aim is not to force everything into rigid right angles but to refine what is already there, once the whole picture has revealed itself.
Where in your own process do you reach for the ruler and trim your blocks, as you go along, or right at the end once everything is made? I would love to hear how you work in the comments.
