Improv For Planners - The Gold One

I've been busy playing around with Improv For Planners, getting more and more comfortable with improv as I go along. Which actually was the whole point of designing the method in the first place, so I'm the guinea pig proving to myself that it works.

The latest of my Improv quilts is this beautiful yellow and gold one.

I won a FQ bundle in a giveaway from Camelot Fabrics, that contained a lovely set of yellow, olive, and gold print fabrics. It also had some green solids included but I decided those would go in my stash for a future project. 

So what better project to use these on than a new Improv For Planners quilt? 

Using prints for Improv For Planners

I hadn't yet played around with using prints for my improv quilts. Quite a few of my students have used blenders like Moda Grunge, and a couple brave souls jumped in with some print fabrics, but I hadn't tried it out yet until this quilt. Seeing as this bundle had mainly tone-on-tone prints, I figured this would be a great first try. 

After having just done the Pink & White improv quilt, where I played with using white as a background instead of having a second colourway, I thought I would try the same with the white fabrics with the gold print here. 

In addition, the olive fabric was going to be my "pop of colour" all across the quilt.

Here are the fabrics I ended up using in the quilt. In total, I had 4 FQs of the gold on white print fabrics, 4 FQs of yellow, and 1 FQ of the olive solid. I decided to use one of the gold prints (second from the right) with the yellows, because from a distance it reads more like an overall gold colour than the other 3 that are very clearly white background with gold designs.

Getting the layout right

With the Improv For Planners system, a layout is given and just filled in with various blocks. So there is wiggle room to place the blocks, while still making sure everything fits and is easily pieceable. 

Because I had decided to use the olive solid fabric as a pop of colour across the quilt, I only used it sparingly in my blocks, using one piece here and there so it wouldn't cluster too much. This also meant that once I had the quilt top laid out on my design wall, I moved the blocks around quite a bit until it felt balanced and I didn't end up with all the olive pieces in the same half or corner of the quilt.

Quilting the Improv For Planners quilt

I decided to quilt this one myself again. It is the small version, so it fit easily under my machine. I wanted to try out another straight line design, but not the same as in my first two quilts.

I did a quick scroll on Pinterest for some ideas, and landed on this diamond crosshatch pattern that I thought fit the quilt really well. I started by using the diagonal of one of the small rectangular blocks as my guide, and used a Hera marker to draw that line as my starting line. Then I marked lines 1" apart across the whole quilt, in the same direction and quilted those first.

Then for the crossing lines, I started with the same rectangular block again and used the other diagonal as my guide for the starting line, and marked 1" lines across in the other direction.

I had also recently won a whole set of Isacord threads, so of course I had to try them out. They are technically machine embroidery threads, but they work a treat for machine quilting, too. They are shiny, which went perfectly with the gold print on some of the fabrics. I picked a light vanilla colour that blended into the colours of the quilt, but thanks to the shine it still stands out.

Using leftovers for the quilt back

As with the first two of my Improv For Planners quilts, I used the leftovers from piecing the front to make the back of the quilt. There wasn't quite as much left over as I had for the other two examples, so I had to piece it together a lot more, but I still like how it turned out. It's almost like getting a second quilt out of the deal. 

And you can really see the quilting design on the back. Having some larger, un-pieced sections shows that off nicely.