When I started doing patchwork, most of my work, since the beginning, took the shape of wall quilts.
I completed also a king size bed quilt, some baby quilts, table runners as wedding gifts; but hanging wall quilts have always been my preference.

A wall quilt deserves a title, doesn’t it?

My quilts are abstract, but it’s easy to see emerging shapes within an abstract pattern. So, my titles often reflect what I can see as popping out, usually during or after the composition: not an initial intention, but the surprise brought by improv.

I realized soon that each viewer does notice a different pattern of his own within a given abstract image; sometimes this vision remained parent to my title, other times it was very different, thus showing the opening of possibilities. Due to this, I occasionally quilt (in the form of sewn handwritten text) all the words that the viewers told me, derived from their mental images: their suggestions came while the work was still in progress, which was a lively experience I was honored of. For the finished quilt, the title could still be a single word, but the multiple options remained embedded in thread on the work.

In other occasions, I went more extreme.
Looking at my older quilts reminded me of all that was happening in the period when I was piecing it. I experienced this also with drawing, including some drawings done when I was a child, and with my photographs: they often kept inside years-old memories, even if not at all related with the picture subject. Thus, I started to fix, in a quilt title, a favorite moment coming from the period when that work was in progress. Quilt scope is free!
Some of those titles are very personal hints. They may hold small instants of magic. Such as: “Paper puppet”. This name refers to a fleeting moment spent with my kind on the balcony, when we played with home-made paper figures, pending from a thin rope held in our hands, figures who seemed to dance while moved by the air… to jump and run on the mild wind… “Paper puppet” became the title of a patchwork, which contained many floating squares: some resemblance with the title still exists, while our playful memory becomes unforgettable, sticking to the name of the quilt.

Titles like these are less representative of the image visible on the quilt: they are more an expression of the feelings experienced while sewing that piece. Still, in one of my last quilts that has name selected as a story memory, I noticed that the consequences of this approach can be funny.

In the days when I was sewing the quilt for the Orange Summer Challenge, I spent a weekend on the mountain: my first holiday in open air, after months passed strictly at home. I met friends, and we took a long walk in the wood; at a certain point, it started to be late, and the only way to get back in short was to pass through a river barefoot, in a point where the water was not too deep. No bridge available nearby. I opened the way, testing if it was possible to pass. The water was icy… it hurt the feet. We were nine: parents, kids, persons aged from 10 months old (a child who stayed dry, clinging on the back of her mother) to seventy years old (a brave grandmother who passed the river with fluent and bold stride!) Since at the beginning we felt unsure, it was a great emotion when all of us succeeded! We reached a restaurant just in time before the rain started to pour!

When I was back home, I titled my quilt, which contained nine rounded log cabins (exactly as the nine faces of us, who looked at each other happily after the river crossing experience), “Ford”. This wonderful memory deserved to be fixed there.

Some days later, my quilting friends Giovanna, while looking at the finished mini quilt and hearing of its title “Ford”, asked me: “Where is the river?”. And I had to admit: “There is no river”. The abstract quilt image was weakly connected with the symbol of the nine of us who passed that ford, but I had not depicted any river, and even the colors had nothing to do with water… the quilt surface was extensively covered by warm orange solids. Giovanna insisted: “I meant, where is the river you visited, geographically?”. This, I was more than happy to tell: I love being familiar with all the river names in my region, so I could explain everything about its flow line. And I allowed myself: maybe my title was not so odd.

How many different ways to choose a title may exist?

The route indicated by improv process, sometimes takes unexpected turns. This is one of such stories.

A few months ago, while I was testing a challenge of our own with Giovanna, we selected 13 fabric colors to be used by both of us, so that each of us would compose a quilt dedicated to color green.

Giovanna was checking whether our color combination was working well, by trying the palette with a software that creates nested squares. Maybe seeing the image of her trial has influenced me: I started sewing my work, by coupling colors in a composition based on squares.

Day after day, switching and adjusting block position, I prepared enough pieces to fill the chosen size on the design wall. The figures were growing from left to right, from a crowded corner towards a bit of negative space, as if the blocks were going with the wind. At that point, everything seemed ready, it was only required to unite the blocks. But… I felt uneasy… something in the composition didn’t fit.

Suddenly, the mother quilt divided itself into two children quilts.
It was like the duplication mechanism of a cell that splits into two cells: biology calls it “mitosis”…

So, the route of improvisation led to two different paths, and I finalized two distinct quilts. Which, by the way, played me another trick: they forgot the quest for green, and decided to be dressed in orange (a-ha, orange likes to become a dominant color! Our first public challenge knows it well…).

At the end of the story, I started a third quilt to respect the initial goal set between Giovanna and myself, and for the third one I really used a lot of green. But this is another story…

In the previous post, we left Giovanna busy with her suitcase to be filled, and some travel to be done.

What was the content of her suitcase?
A bundle of quilts!
All the quilts she had sewn in the recent years. Large quilts, small quilts, mini quilts, top to be finished, flying thread…

In February 2020, Giovanna took the train from Mestre, near Venice, and reached Paola in Trieste.
At Paola’s home, the quilts popping out from Giovanna’s bag seemed to be endless. It was the first chance we had to see each other in person, and to look at all the quilting work done by both of us until that day.

What kind of quilts are the ones carried by Giovanna?
We met because Improv Modern Patchwork is our common passion. We could see similar things in our works, but once we put them together, we also noticed all the differences.
The same, but different. Is this the essence of improv? For sure it is one of the things we most appreciate. To be free during working process may lead, over time, to an identifiable customization.

Reading books of reknown improv quilters, we can see that almost all of them describe what improv is. Words are almost the same, but their works are not. At a first glance, they are identifiable one from another. Different ways to use colors, shapes. layout, quilting, become a kind of signature.

As well as modern patchwork, also improv patchwork is part of a bigger movement in continuous evolution, and it is experienced as a personal creative growth.
We are at the beginning of this journey: we are studying and experimenting. We are driven by curiosity and passion. In this website we will try to create some insights, and to gather other quilters, in order to grow together.

Hello!

The path towards the construction of this site started on the verge of new year 2020, when Giovanna and Paola first met, thanks to the common interest for improv modern patchwork.

We encountered on the web: both of us attended an on-line workshop, Improv Row by Row, led by Daria Blandina and Roberta Sperandio, and the sneak peeks of our work in progress suggested we had a similar taste for color choice.

Paola decided to break the ice inviting Giovanna to start a joint project. During the first phone call, while Giovanna was on the mountain enjoiying family holidays, Paola proposed to meet in person. Even if this required to take the train, Giovanna liked the idea of travelling, and started to fill her luggage. A new year was starting: the best moment to fill our agenda with new plans!

So, let’s introduce ourselves.

Since year 1997, Paola pursued her passion with graphics by use of drawing and photography, presented in solo and group exhibits. Her project of science communication based on creative pictures taken at the microscope toured Italy for some years.

In 2017 she discovered modern patchwork as a mean for expression, and started sewing wall quilts. Her first quilt gallery, “Doppio Trasporto” (walking on fabric fields) was shown in Trieste at Atelier dell’arte; other group exhibits include participation to Abilmente fair in Vicenza.

Giovanna familiarized with patchwork for the first time in 2007 during a journey in USA. The approach with modern patchwork came in 2016, when she noticed the freedom of creative expression possible with such technique. Curiosity lead to passion, study, research and experimentation: she always strives to learn and improve.

Giovanna’s quilts have been shown in the main Italian textile fairs (in Turin, in Vicenza) and in local guild group shows (in Treviso). Her work has been featured in international blogs and magazines dedicated to modern patchwork.

In this web site we will collect our ideas on improv, we will tell stories of joint initiatives, and we will go for a wider participation to this adventure.

… to be continued!