Retreat Finish (the second one)

Before I show you my new finish, I thought I'd show you what is going on in the studio. It is not a happy sight, is it? Ahh, that's how it goes. Chances are that it's never going to embroider again. 

Not that it has embroidered any for me anyway. Firstly, it made horrible stitches. Secondly, as we discovered today, the gizmo that holds the PC card is broken. So I have hundreds of designs that I can't use. 

The news gets worse: I've invested more money in the machine than it's worth. Have you made a bad judgement like this one? What did you do about it? I'll give Richard a bit more time to work on it but if it's done, well, we just made a bad investment.


But there's good news, too. 
I have a finished top to show you! I had a few ideas for quilts before leaving for retreat last week. For this particular quilt top I wanted to just sew at random, very improvisationally, and with no plan or system. Just sew some bits together, stack them until there were plenty in the stack, then start sewing the big bits together. 


It really started at home by pulling some scraps together. I settled on a blue/teal/green colorway with lots of whites to keep it all from becoming too busy and worrisome.

I pulled mostly solids and a very few small prints. Large and small pieces of white went into the Ziploc but I knew I'd be cutting those as needed. After I had some large chunks, I put them on the design wall to let the colors mingle in my mind. (I like that phrase.)

A some point I decided to make a few curves. That "boomerang" block (circled in red) on the very top was the first one. At first I wasn't sure I liked it, but it grew on me. I decided to make one in green next. It's much smaller but I'd already decided that everything would go into the quilt. The only concession would be that I could cut blocks apart if necessary.

This zipper block is the last one. It's my favorite part of the entire quilt. From here I only needed to sew all the big chunks and smaller pieces into a top. I added a six inch border on all four sides to give it a frame and called it done.

What do you think? Does it work in an improv sort of way?