Comedy Club Telephone Quilts

Recently my improv small group, Comedy Club Quilters, did a "Telephone Quilts" activity. We had so much fun! Read on to find out how we got from this adorable dog photo to this final quilt...

First, Loide's daughters sent her this darling photo as inspiration for her quilt. None of the rest of us got to see it at this point...

We had decided ahead of time that all of us would make 14" square quilts based on our inspiration. Here is what Loide made in response to the photo....

Then Loide sent a photo of her quilt to Chris D. who made this quilt in response....

And Chris sent a photo of her quilt to Bonnie, who did this.....

Bonnie's favorite color, red, makes an appearance

And then things began to go rogue! Anne, having received a photo of Bonnie's quilt, was inspired to make this.....

is that a pinwheel I see?

And Susan, inspired by Anne's quilt did this.....

When I received Susan's photo I saw buildings and a night sky. Here's my quilt.....

And finally, Chris S. made this quilt in response to mine....

It was fun to lay them all out together and see the progression....

I highly recommend this fun activity to your small groups!

 

Pandemic Porchdrop

 I shared a while back that my improv small group, Comedy Club Quilters, completed an improv round robin this spring. It was fun and different from past round robins because of the pandemic, thus I named my completed quilt Pandemic Porchdrop. I realized I never shared the finish with you.

I ended up adding borders with a green "stripe" just to frame it out and make it a bit bigger. I rather like the effect! I pieced the back and added a faced binding...

Those squares running across the back? They are pieces of each of our signature fabrics. I embroidered each maker's name on her signature fabric so I would remember who did what down the road...

After I machine quilted some random wavy lines in green, I decided to add some hand stitched Xs here and there. These were done with a variety of size 8 and 12 pearl cottons...

I love the end result! And the dear friends who had a hand in it. 

Improv Round Robin

 My fantastic Improv small group (we call ourselves the Comedy Club Quilters) has done speedy improv round robins at the retreat center twice before. You can read about those here, and here. It's a fun event we always look forward to. But, like it has done to so many things, the global pandemic caused us to rethink our process this year. In the end, we pulled off our round robin with car swaps, porch drops, and maybe more than one quilt shop meet up (fully masked of course!).

I started out with this fun block, made up of a bunch of improv orphan blocks I had been ignoring for a long time...

I had a blast working on everyone's quilts (we swapped them out once a week) and never saw mine again once it hit the road. A couple of sneak peeks that I posted along the way....

The ladybugs were my signature fabric that I added to each quilt.

On Friday, the five of us who participated met up at the park (our first in person meeting in months! thank you vaccines) to reveal our finished quilt tops. 

They did not disappoint! I think having a week to work on each one really paid off. We all said that we would spend a couple of days looking over the week's project as it hung on our design wall. We have all gotten to know each other's styles and really played to each other's strengths.

Here is my finished top. I couldn't be happier!

I am thinking about how I want to quilt it now. And here's a photo of all 5 of our tops together.... I love them all!

Before we left the park today we had an idea brewing for our next collaborative adventure! Stay tuned!

vote

 Hubby and I early voted in Texas yesterday. I've been voting for more than 50 years and have never felt as passionate about voting as I do this year. There is so much at stake in our nation right now and the obligation (and privilege) to vote has been heavy on my mind.

The line was not long yesterday at the polls, and it moved quickly. They had great safety measures in place and everyone was wearing masks and socially distant. 20 minutes from arrival to finish... not bad!

In a very timely manner, our Improv small group, the Comedy Club Quilters, chose "VOTE" as our quilty prompt this month. I made this postcard to share...

I used Sarah's great tutorial posted here.  I'd really like to make more postcards. Maybe I'll do all of our monthly prompts as postcards so I have a collection!

I hope you have a plan to get out and vote!

an outdoor photo shoot

 Is anyone else desperately missing their quilting buddies? Our improv small group has been meeting on Zoom since March but it's just not the same. Since the Texas weather is finally cooling down (hooray for fall!) we decided to do an outdoor quilt photo shoot at a nearby park. We met at the park in the morning on a perfect, cool and cloudy day and got some beautiful photos of our quilts.

Five of us met, we all wore masks and social distanced to keep each other safe. There was a pretty gazebo that served as a nice backdrop for most of the quilts.

This is a charity improv quilt we made as a group last year.

There was also a beautiful bridge over a pond where we got some gorgeous pictures! I love the way the quilt reflects in the water in this shot. This gorgeous quilt was made by my friend Chris.

There is an old train car at the park and it was a great backdrop for groups of quilts.

Many people wandered by to see what we were up to. It was fun to chat with them and share our work. A mini outdoor quilt show!

I think this is my favorite photo of the day, another one of Chris's quilts

We got a great shot of our guilds charity quilts that are ready to be donated to the kids at CASA in December.

It was a wonderful day and a safe way to spend time with friends! Do you have a favorite spot for quilty photo shoots?

Another improv round robin

Well it's been about six months now, but last October my improv small group, Comedy Club Quilters, did another lightening round robin. This is becoming an annual event because we all love it so much! You can read about the first one we did here, and learn more about our process. This second one was done in the same manner.

Here's the improv block I made for the "center" of my quilt....

It was fun to see everyone else's starting blocks when we arrived at the retreat center...

Eight of us participated in the round robin this time. I didn't take process pictures this time. It was a whirlwind of a day, with fabric and quilts flying around the circle of improv quilters. At the end of the day, this is what we all had to take home...

Wow! We have all evolved in our individual improv styles and it shows. I loved my final quilt top. Brought it home and tucked it onto a shelf in my studio and promptly forgot about it! Life happened. There was a trip to see my parents and my son in Phoenix. A graduation in Austin. Christmas. Quiltcon..... then WHAM Coronavirus hit the world and lots of home time caused me to dig through old projects and get to work! Last week I quilted this one up on my domestic machine and added faced bindings. What a great finish! Big thank you to my improv buddies for their contributions to this quilt.

Plano Quilt Show 2019

The McKinney Modern Quilt Guild had a great showing at the Plano Quilt Show this year! We had encouraged our members to enter more quilts this year, and enter they did! You can see all of their entries here. 

I entered two of my quilts in the Modern Category. Left Out and Be Calm, which they hung right together. Be Calm got a ribbon for honorable mention!

And I was part of two group quilts, both of which received third place ribbons! My Gnome in the Christmas Forest, made with bee blocks from my Solid Seven Bee mates and a gnome by my friend Chris (Quilted by Jeff Loper at Happy Quilts), 

Chris and I together at the show!

and Seismic Log Cabin, made by my small group, the Comedy Club Quilters....

Some of our Comedy Club Quilters; Chris D, Beth, me, Chris S, Bonnie & Anne 

It was great fun to attend the show with my friends and see all of the fabulous entries!