some trees that despite what my kids thought, were not Christmas trees

I love making this kind of quilt. This kind of improv, throw it all up on my design board, and make it a quilt, quilt.

--I am going to digress a little here. For a while, about 5 or 6 year ago, I was buying several books about improv quilting. I honestly thought it was a foreign concept that I was eager to learn more about because I found it so appealing,  based on how I like to create quilts. 

HELLO SHANNON. I was about 9 pages into the first book when I was like, waittttt.......this is already what I am doing. Until I read multiple books on improvisational quilting, I had no idea that the style I am most drawn to and tend to create the most of is, in fact, improv by nature. 

This is a funny thing about quilting *rules*. Someone once told me that improv was strictly free-cutting (meaning no rulers, just cutting a shape with scissors without tracing) and having no plan as to color (I was told it meant literally grabbing fabrics at random.) While I was drawn to the idea of improv, I still need SOME structure (ie., cutting with rulers, or a defined color palette, etc.) so I just never considered that I was already engaging in an improv style because it did not fit the definition as I understood it. 

This kind of idea has been embedded in what I knew of quilting for so long. Like, I don't use pins, so I am not a legit quilter, I don't like to do EPP, so I am not a serious quilter, I don't cut every single block ahead of time precisely, so I am not a real quilter. All of these ideas sort of diminished the idea I had in my head of what I was creating and, in a way, sort of chips away at the value of my own creations. I know I have probably blown some of these ideas up in my head, but I think this notion of me not fitting into the image of what I have read "legit/good quilters" do has steered me into this other type of quilting. 

All that to say, this is not a complaint. I very quickly realized that making quilts under the confines of 'rules' does not appeal to me. At all. So that very thought gave me a little freedom to just make whatever I wanted to and let go of the idea that I was doing it wrong. I am sharing all of this here only so that people, who might be thinking of quilting, or are at the beginning of creating, can know that for every blog or book or video you read or see that tells you how to do it, there is still space for you to do it your own way.

Digression over. --

Here is my quilt that I wanted to feel like little trees against a snowy winter. These are not Christmas trees, despite my kids repeatedly telling me that they LOVED my Christmas tree quilt when they saw it on my design wall. It's my Hood River in late November quilt.

I think it's the stars that really do it for me.

I listed this in my shop and sent it off with love when I shipped it off to it's family in South Carolina!