Earlier this week my SAQA mentee and I found ourselves discussing the currently popular improvisational approach to making patchwork wall art. I consulted AI and got this: “Improvisational patchwork (or improv quilting) is a spontaneous approach to sewing fabric scraps together without strict patterns, templates, or rulers. Instead of precise, uniform blocks, the maker allows the design to evolve organically, celebrating wonky angles, unique color palettes, and creative freedom”…
Improv quilt designs are popular, and the subject of workshops currrently being offered by some popular Big Name quilting teachers, a couple of whom came up in discussion. Their students are taught to not pre-plan anything, not draw any pattern or diagram, and they only need a heap of scraps, a design wall and sewing machine to start. And they do this by (1) pulling any old fabric scrap out of the bag and pining it up on a design wall (2) adding another to it, then another and so on, continuing until what feels the right size and shape is reached (3) sandwiching the design with batting and backing layers and quilting, finishing off , and voila! it’s ready to hang. Any sense of colour the student has is fine; and I think too many self-styled improv quilters have little understanding of colour theory, or little appreciation that in the Gees Bend world, quirky colour schemes or odd print additions into a quilt had nothing to do with any kind of theory but a lot to do with the utilitarian purpose of those quilts, made largely from recycled fabric, for warm bedding in a very poor rural community miles away from fabric stores, which most of those very poor farmers’ wives were too poor to buy much new fabric from, anyway.
But improv or freehand cutting and piecing is just a technique, a construction tool which Nancy Crow quickly demonstrated to us in a 1991 workshop so we could quickly work through many design exercises for that class. She had seen both the wavy line curved piecing method of Marylin Stothers who finally published her book on it in 1988 after years of Nancy’s urging to do so; and the exciting improvisational style of patchwork pieced by the Gees Bend quilters . Both Marylin Stothers’ and Gees Bend quilters’ works exhibit some kind of general idea/plan in their makers’ minds – even if they are not drawn or planned on paper. They’re an idea the maker follows as they go, with colour or shape adaptation as deemed relevant, and substituted fabric if one ran a bit short before completion.
I prefer to describe my way of constructing pieced designs as ‘freehand piecing’, a more accurate term but which still encompasses the desired organic looking result from composing with lines and squares, triangles, circles or arcs and other geometric shapes cut freehand, compared with the severity of lines and shapes cut against a hard ruler or plastic template shape. The organic looking patterns I achieve are in contemporary quiltmaking terms “improvisational”, but, as I have posted elsewhere, I myself actually do carry out some very simple-looking planning – of a chart or diagram, often jotting down lists of words beside that diagram to remind me of the thought processes I went through, even if the diagram’s not much – because those words speak to me, too!
I believe that a bit of planning is ultimately time saving, as it helps me to just start the cutting and piecing, and prevents me taking too many wrong turns as it comes together. And I certainly believe it helps prevent those piles of unfinished works that some art quilt makers confess to accumulating.
I rarely make a plan with my improv work but cannot work well with ‘just start and add on as you go.’ I seem to mostly start out from a color scheme, which is a plan of sorts. There is such a difference in my mind between choosing, sewing, utilizing materials for utilitarian work and art work…two paths in the same forest. I agree that improv or freehand piecing is just a technique, and should be incorporated into all the knowledge an artist acquires as they grow in their field.