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…