What's the Word: Covid Quilt Challenge #14

This past weekend we undertook another quilt challenge. We had a little less time available than normal, so we decided to hand-pick what we were doing instead of leaving it up to fate. We were thinking of doing improv piecing to help use up some of our scraps. However, we thought that might be too broad with limited time, so we narrowed it down to improv letters: a word in particular.

Neither of us new anything about improv piecing, let alone improv lettering. So, as usual, we started with googling. While there are lots of pictures out there of improv letters, there are not a lot of instructions. Ultimately we decided that it was mostly figuring out piecing order and then just going for it.

That meant that step 1 was picking a word. That's harder than it sounds. You can't google for inspiration, and there are unlimited options (well somewhat limited because it still needs to fit in the given perimeter). I settled on the first word I thought of, which was HOPE. I felt like it was a good word for spring (and maybe trying to project into my life a bit). The spring inspiration made me feel like I wanted to use green fabrics for the letters. I also decided that it would look nice and go with the theme of hope to have the colours go from light at the bottom to dark at the top to represent growth and change.

I felt like this was ae challenge that didn't need a practice round, so I got going pulling greens from my small and medium scraps, sorting them by value, and piecing them together. I had already drawn out my letters and decided the piecing order, so I just had to assign value to the various pieces. Then I used my green bits to start constructing my letters.

Once the letters were made, I attached them together. I had always planned on the H being bigger than the other letters. However, due to "poor planning" (is that a thing with improv piecing?) the E ended up not as tall as the O and the P, which made me a little sad at first. I didn't want to have to redo things, so I pressed on. As I continued working with it, I realized that it also just made it look like the letters were ascending, which also fits in with the theme of hope and growth. So I'm glad I ran with it.

As I started working, I realized I wanted to make my letters a little bigger so that I could have more of a colour sweep. I also knew that I wanted to add some floral embellishments to the quilt so that it was not just letters. But because the letter were bigger, I also wanted to make sure there was enough space for my flowers and stems, so that meant I had to make the space below the letters bigger. With everything a little bigger than I originally planned, this meant I wasn't going to make the perimeter rules. I texted my friend to see what she was thinking, because I didn't really want to compromise the design just to fit the arbitrary perimeter rules. Luckily she said that she was also running big on her letters, so we decided to ignore the perimeter rule this time around.

I quilted the background with swirls that all started from the bottom and grew up. It meant I had to be a little creative with how to fill some of the upper bits above the letters, but I managed to successfully meander my way up there.

I was originally planning on full flowers, but then as I thought about it, I decided that buds would be better to fit in with the theme, so that's what I went with. I also decided I wanted to use up scraps, so I only used fabric I already had with a fusible backing. This limited the size and shape of the leaves I could make, but I think the heart shaped leaves I ended up with are perfect for the project. I added more quilting to stitch these bits down and add a few stems and leaves. I also added some nice sunshine because that's what seems to be giving me hope right now (especially as we go into another lockdown).

I found a perfect binding that was a mix of light and dark green and some yellow. And then the final step was to take it outside in the sunshine for a photo shoot.

 

Here is the back.

And here it is with what will one day be my daffodils.
Hopefully one day soon :).

My friend had a similar inspiration to me (it might have had something to do with the fact that she saw me googling quilted flowers :P). She also made green letters (I think she had more scraps to work with thanks to 3 baby quilts for a sister who loves bright green).

Can you tell what her word is from this :P?

I have to say she was much more ambitious than me in letter formation.

  

She also decided to add some floral embellishments. She chose to improv piece hers.

But then she had to figure out what to do with them. She didn't like the look of just sticking them on top.

So she started a fun game of unpicking and fitting them in to the piece.

 

She did some lovely loop-de-loop quilting in her background (this was my second choice for quilting mine :) ). 

 

And also finished it with a green binding.

We did a good job of unintentionally making the same project :P. I hope they brighten your day the same way they brightened ours.