Improv process sometimes reminds me of game-books, those stories where the reader can decide how the plot goes on, by choosing between different options at the end of each chapter, thus being redirected to distant pages to continue reading; multiple story endings exist, as a result of the alternative routes taken.

Sometimes I see, inside one of my completed quilts, all the different paths I had in front of me while sewing, all the versions that I didn’t make come true, like the multiple game-book story ends.

For example, during the construction of the columns and rows quilt, I prepared digital images that developed possible options on how to finish it: a full texture overlay; texture fields interrupted by windows. Even if I finalized it in another manner (with an open-boundary network), I still would like to look at the real quilt, and to see, like a hologram, the other possibilities coming true.

Photographing construction alternatives is even stronger in showing me the history of a quilt improvisation path. I completed my first exercise attending the  course of Irene Roderick, where I photographed all the different compositions tried with the process named quiltdance. I still love one of such photos, an improv I did not materialize, a “deep sea” version: it had a blue area going down bigger and bigger; it should have contained strange yellow shaped creatures, diving scattered versus the bottom: I still wonder which shapes those creatures may have grown into.

When I pose myself the question on how to check the effect of different composition choices, I can hear the voices of Nancy Crow and Lisa Call, telling me: “Do them all! Work in series!”. I visualize the effort of spending months sewing the remake of all the imagined versions for the same quilt. But, in contrast to such good rule, many other ideas push and wish to open the door; all the unused colors in my fabric stash ask for their turn in a fresh new start. I often remain with the words of Alanis Morissette, singing in my mind: “The good advice, that you just didn’t take… isn’t it ironic?”

In the long run, with some favorite shapes, I still do a bit of work in series mode. I have a few preferred motifs, or concepts, to whom I periodically return. Such as the simple, and evergreen, nested square shape. In the past years, I’ve tried several ways to position squares in a textured field. This month, The Orange Summer Challenge gave me the perfect opportunity to continue such series.

Since the Orange Summer Challenge is still open until late September, I decided to sew a second orange quilt. While participating to the game with a second entry, I didn’t feel the pressure I experienced with my first entry: I didn’t need to try something unusual. I could select something I was familiar with, remixed within new boundaries, i.e. the simple rules set by the game.
Now, my orange squares quilt has become one of my favorite versions of square-based quilts in my series. I can admit it: repeating an exercise serially feels like a good idea.

When I was a child, I was fascinated by kaleidoscopes. I mean, old style kaleidoscopes, made with fragments of colored glass, inserted in a cardboard tube, with mirroring internal walls. The most beautiful ones were quite heavy for my childish hands, and when I rotated the tube, a charming clinking noise captured me. Pointed pebbles trilled like bells, accompanying the formation of shapes inside the pipe: multicolored flowers, fading shapes… bright hues, optical illusions lasting for one second and disappearing while I was trying to give them a name… I spent hours with my eye in the viewfinder!

Today’s kaleidoscopes are made in plastic, they are not as enchanting as the old ones… but I don’t mind: because I found my new kaleidoscope in the world of improv!

I was thinking of this yesterday evening: it’s days that I’m struggling with the quilt top dedicated to our game; I decided to challenge myself with free-form creation, postponing to a later phase the issue of how to unite a series of jagged pieces.  

I create blocks, I place them on the design wall, I displace them trying to harmonize each one with the other parts. If the audition is successful, I take a photo to remember parts positioning, and I immediately try another version. Each trial creates a new design, and the overall perception of the image is recombined every time! It’s like a kaleidoscope: images are fragmented, rotated upside-down, remixed, and in each session I think: “Yes, this is the right shape!”, but it’s not really true, because the following trial opens new possibilities again! Even the pictures taken become quickly obsolete, because something has changed in the meanwhile, some blocks have been cut and sewn in a new fashion, a new order, a new version…

My head becomes populated with a series of images, where my top becomes alive, it shows a smiling face, an elegant bow, a funny grimace, and then disappears, leaving me alone, with the last choice fixed in stone on the wall. 
Is this one in front of me the best possible combination ever? 
I don’t know, probably it’s not the right one, maybe another option (tried twenty changes before) was a better one… but pieces have likely been cut and modified too much: that old revision is now unattainable… 

I don’t know if I expressed my feeling well, but for me, improv is like this: a captivating acrobat that offers kaleidoscopic visions as a gift.

You may say it’s just fabric, just an ordinary attempt to create a beautiful work. You may say that there are hundreds of wonderful patterns (I’ve appreciated and executed plenty of them myself too), patterns which are easier to be followed with their step-by-step instructions. But my reply is that improv can be understood once it has been tried. Trying to play with fabric, to free one’s mind, to follow a dream… the worst result is a piece that needs to be modified, to be readjusted, unless that feeling arrives: the sensation of having reached what was desired. A voice from the heart telling that it’s possible to stop, and to enjoy the result.
I wish all of you to find the kaleidoscope of your dreams, while trying improv!

Venice, Rome, Trieste. This is where each of us is living. A distance of 700 kilometres keeps us apart, we have almost never seen each other in person. Ok, to be honest, Paola and Giovanna met once in Trieste, and we have ideas for visiting Carla in Rome, but such plans have no date yet. Thus, the solution is clear: our common passion travels essentially on-line.   
Distance is not a show-stopper: on the contrary, it sparks our curiosity!
When a conversation on improv does start, it cannot be stopped. We feel like visiting the same sewing room, the virtual studio we have created seems to be working like a real place! Quilt Improv Studio is a departure gate from which many adventures can fly, following the line of a thread.

Improv patchwork is known by a small number of people in Italy: we wish it becomes more widespread around us… and the world is full of improv quilters! 
By comparing information from each of us, we familiarize with new methods, we share notice on quilt artists to be followed, we express our thoughts on approaches to improv… and the geographical distance between us disappears: it doesn’t matter if we’ve not met yet, the bond grows strong!
Two months have passed since the launch of our Orange Summer Challenge: seeing that it reached quilters from distant places in the globe has been a joy and a surprise! 
We feel the charm of experiencing a collaboration really aimed to deepen our knowledge and, when possible, to involve more quilters in improv initiatives.   
There is still time to try the Orange initiative: we hope that it gives fun, that it facilitates connection between quilters, and the only risk in practicing improv is to get passionate for it!

If you are starting or finalizing an Orange improv quilt, you may be interested to know that we are already engaged in phone calls, chats and discussions on the next steps: we are setting the foundation for the new game to come. We invite you to keep an eye on @quiltimprovstudio Instagram stories, because in the next period we shall involve you on some decisions for the next initiative, in order to take your preferences into account.
What to add? Our video talks on the topic of quilting are like a river of words, flowing and flowing along… until they are interrupted by a burst of laughter! And we love those moments too!

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?