Start Improv Quilting with Cindy Grisdela

Improv Quilting - it’s a technique that can polarize a room of quilters quicker than asking hand or machine! Improv quilting can feel freeing or frustrating. You might feel like you are paralyzingly directionless or thriving in creatively controlled chaos. However you feel, Cindy Grisdela understands!

Her book Adventures in Improv Quilts focuses on Cindy’s motto of having “permission to play.” For those of us who have been married to our patterns and instructions, Cindy breaks improv techniques into bitesize pieces that take away the dizzying feeling of not knowing where to start or how to keep going. She has a whole section in her book dedicated to explaining how to use the book as a jumping-off point for your own adventures in improv. 

Cindy took over our Instagram account and confessed that she used to be afraid of color. You wouldn’t know it by looking at her quilts. With a traditional quilter, teacher, and artist background, Cindy found a way to take the conventional fundamentals of quilt piecing, color theory, and fabric selection as a road map for improv quilting.

This quilt is the perfect example! The blocks on the left side of the quilt started in the same way as a traditional Log Cabin block until Cindy began to add sections of pieced strips within each round of the block, creating a playful patched effect to the blocks. She then arranged the blocks alternating cool and warm colors for contrast before using the artful rule of 3rds to add 3 wide strips to the bottom and right sides of the log cabins blocks. This created a classically pleasing focal point just left of center out of the log cabin portion of the quilt. The result is a beautiful improvised piece that used just enough rules of art theory to create a visually stunning quilt!

If you’d like to start your own improv journey, Adventures in Improv Quilting is a great introductory book. Cindy also has several classes on our Creative Spark Online Learning platform, including “Artful Improv - Permission to Play,” which will help you hone your improv technique further and even includes a FREE bonus eBook of Cindy’s other improv quilt title, Artful Improv. 

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