Quilt It Wright - Part I

I am going to fill you in on what I've been making in the last few months.  It was a whirlwind of sewing.  I finished a couple of quilts for Quilt Market back in October - which I will show in another post.  This post is about an improv quilt that I had been thinking about from the beginning of the year and finally worked on in September and October.

Part I - Inspiration, Beginning an Improv Quilt

I was inspired by the works of Frank Lloyd Wright, specifically his unique masterpiece Fallingwater 

Mr. Wright had several principles of design he followed:

Open Space

Geometric Shapes

Horizontal Lines

You find all of those elements in Fallingwater - and also in Modern Quilting.  Improv quilting isn't quite the same as Modern quilting - improvisational piecing is a process, it isn't willy nilly, it's bringing together pieces in a unique way that is pleasing in design, maybe following a vision or inspiration you have.  Other quilters might say that improv piecing IS willy nilly, just grabbing and sewing together.  That's not how I would define improv, but to each quilter his own ideas and descriptions.  

For my piece I was first taken by Fallingwater, and then I did some research on FLW - after some research, I put the photos and the readings away and I pulled fabrics.  I didn't want to follow an exact replica of Fallingwater - this is an inspiration piece.  

I used one of my favorite lines for this quilt - Oakshott solids

Although the photos of Fallingwater are not blue - I settled on blues for my color palette.  Blue is not my usual go to color way, but I had it in my mind that blues were what I wanted, so that is where I went.  

And naturally I first picked a color for the background majority of the quilt (the one on the far right) that I only had a FQ of and after searching the internet and a consultation call with Michael Oakshott, realized that the FQ I had was all there was going to be - I had to move on to a different idea for the background. 

Settling on a  new background idea, then sewing together yardage of Oakshott. 

That I hated the moment it went together.
Well hated for this project, I saw potential for another project, and that's how we quilters jump from one thing to another.  

I had to now rework the ideas I had with the fabrics I had available. It wasn't my first option, but I think that you'll agree with what I came out with in the end turned out for the best. I put together rectangles and squares of Oakshott, a gradation of color from dark to light.  

Next: After putting them all on my design wall, I started the process of piecing around each focal piece.

Part II here Piecing
Part III here Quilting
Part IV here Faced Binding
Part V here The Finished Quilt