Tag Archives: improv

The Times We Live In

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The Inspiration

When I had the privilege of hearing Bill Kerr from Modern Quilt Studio speak last year, someone asked the question, “What makes a quilt modern?”

Bill’s answer has stayed with me ever since.  He replied, “It reflects the time we live in.”

I thought a lot about that lately, and it came to mind again as I worked on my latest quilt.

An extended family member is suffering from a heroin addiction. He’s 23 years old. (Close family).

Unless you live under a rock, or unless you have your head buried in the sand, you know that this country is in a crisis.

  • Addiction is the number one killer of those under 50 years old in America.
  • This is the worst overdose epidemic in our country’s history–mostly heroin and fentanyl.
  • In 2015, more people died from drug overdoses than from gun homicides and car accidents COMBINED. And that number has exponentially risen since then. (nytimes).

I don’t want to go into the heartbreak that opioid addiction brings into a family, or the destruction, or the loss of trust and money and emotional fortitude.  No, those are just side shows to the vice-like grip of tragedy and despair that accompany a person with an addiction.

He told his mom that the world is grey, and only appears in color when he is on the drug.  All of this is likely a symptom of underlying depression, but reaching it is difficult through the fog of substance abuse disorder.

The Quilt

Awhile ago, I began working on an improv quilt.  It was basically chaos, and felt like 2017 to me. Layer on top of that the never-ending chorus of my family member’s opioid treatments, shaky and hesitant recoveries, disappearances, and temporary relapses, and “chaos” becomes the perfect description.

But hope lives.

And I found myself creating a quilt for him, made of this crazy, chaotic improvisational fabric. It was interspersed with grey, reflecting the many times he has been through rehab.

But the main message of this quilt is one of hope…for my family member and for all those suffering from this disorder.  This cheapest of all street drugs will not get the last word.  The rest of us surround him with belief that this can be overcome, knowing full well the difficulty.

The Details

I don’t know how others design quilts, but I find that I don’t “think” in software. I have to grab a notepad and sketch it out. I add measurements as I go along.

Next, I took the improv fabric and positioned it under some of the grey to see if it was going to work.  I love that the sun was pouring in as I worked.

I’m pleased with the way it’s turning out.

I’ll be using the serger to piece the back in a beautiful blue sky ombre with splashes of color.

It’s the goal…a blue sky goal and a life of color, on the other side of the grey.

In the big picture, the grey and the colors of anyone’s world mix and mingle back and forth.  The world is not always in glorious color for any of us.  Sometimes it is the grey that provides the relief in order for us to carry on.

If you or someone you love needs help with substance abuse disorder, here are a few resources I follow on twitter to provide support and ideas.

Brasstacksrecovery.com

Shatterproof.org

Facingaddiction.org

Recoveryanswers.org

In the meantime…

…hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. (romans 8:24-25)

So You Think Improv is Easy?

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When I was in college, I found myself in an Improv class.  I’m sure I wanted to take some sort of communications credit and the class was full, so in order to fill the elective, I took the only other alternative:  Improvisation.

I was terrified.

I prayed that the class would be an intellectual discourse on the history of theatre, comedy, acting etc. Nope.

The teacher asked us to introduce ourselves in this way:  The first person just had to say his name.  The second person had to say her name and the name of the guy before her.  The third person had to say her name and the name of the two people prior. You can see where this was heading.  Twenty-six people in (of COURSE I sat in the back), we were all giggling awkwardly, and, I’ll be darned, even the last person remembered everyone’s name. (Now, if we got up and moved around, or…heaven forbid…changed clothes, all bets were off.)

Our next task in the class, was to gather in a large circle. One at a time we each had to pretend to open an umbrella, hold it over our heads, and close it again.  Simple, right? The first few people did the obvious.  Then one person added a shake before they closed their “umbrella” and it suddenly seemed more real.  The next person added a twirl over her head, and before you know it, we were all really seeing each others’ umbrellas. Adding little tiny details mattered when it came to believability.

For our final grade, each person had to produce a skit.  It was the student’s responsibility to:

  1.  Describe a scenario.
  2. Cast characters from within the class.

That’s it.  The skits only lasted 5 minutes or so, but I never laughed so hard during finals as I did during that class.  Something about Improv brings out the silly in people.  It’s like playing, but it’s a lot more about interaction with others.  One of the main tenets of improv is you must always accept another’s reality. So if someone says “What about the kids?”  you can never say “We don’t have any.” (This example is taken from the book “Something Wonderful Right Away” by Jeffrey Sweet.)

All of this brings me to improvisational quilting…or improvisational piecing, which comes first. I wanted to do something freeing, use up some fabric and make something that has not been done by anyone else…at least not in the exact same way.

In order to do this, I had to set up a couple of rules for myself, much like the final in my Improv class:

  1.  I had to use the colorful jelly rolls of ombre fabric.
  2. I am not allowed to square everything up into even-sized blocks. It has to be more free-flowing than that.

That’s it.  Those are my two rules.

As you can see, the fabrics themselves have movement.  The colors are cheerful and I had plenty to work with…at least to start.

I can safely say that I have no idea where I’m going with this.

But I love it.

The challenging part comes in the curves and Y-seams.

If you’re not used to sewing curves, it can be daunting as there are just so many variables to keep nice and neat. It takes a little bit of thoughtfulness.  Just like improv acting.  Go with it. Try it.  Don’t say no to the crazy seam.

It might just create “something wonderful right away.”