Improv Curve Baby Quilt Finish

I admit to loving to make baby quilts.  It is great to have a quick finish project to break up some of the longer projects (I am in the middle of some major paper piecing for a new project).  Here is my latest baby quilt finish...

When I make a baby quilt as a baby shower gift, I usually get a few ideas from the mom-to-be: nursery colors, more modern or traditional, etc and then I get to play around with ideas in my head.  I try to make something that they will like, but I get to use my own creativity and make what I feel like making.

I had received Sherri Lynn Wood's book, "The Improv Handbook for Modern Quilters" (not an affiliate link) for Christmas and had been itching to try one of her scores from the book (each of her scores being a recipe or parameters for an improv quilt).   I was very excited when my co-worker, the mom-to-be, said she loved modern and bright colors.

I used the Layered Curve score and pulled some warm Kona colors from my stash.  Here is my initial fabric pull.  While I pieced, I edited the fabrics a little (like removing the really dark wine colored fabric in the top row).

I cut some wedges freehand and sewed them into curved pieces and then sewed them together into larger pieces.  This part of the process went together pretty easily and quickly.

Then came the hard part, how to combine and sew them together.  Sherri Lynn Wood had some good tips for how to piece the wedges together.  I pieced them together and slowly the wedges became a curved blob of sorts.

I wanted to use some music note fabric I had as the background as the father-to-be is a professor of jazz guitar.  I thought the fabric was good in that is was an off-white so there was not too stark a contrast between the wedges and the background, and the music notes were really more of a subtle low volume print.  Here is the blob laying on the background before appliqueing.

I used needle turned applique to attach the large curved blob to the background.  I really did not want to attempt to piece the unit together with the background fabric and I wanted the music chefs to be straight and continuous. (I made sure the whole piece would fit into one width of fabric to avoid the background being pieced.)

For quilting, I used almost every warm color of Aurifil thread I own to quilt gentle, overlapping, wavy lines using my walking foot.  Some of the threads were different weights, most were 50 wt with a few being 40 wt and one or two being the heavier 28 wt which gave a nice texture to the quilt.

The finished at about 40" x 40".  I had forgotten how difficult it is to square up a quilt without blocks to reference to, I had to borrow some of my husband's large T-squares.  Overall, the quilt was a lot of fun to make and I can't wait to try another of Sherri's scores.

I am linking up to Link a Finish Friday, Whoop Whoop Friday, Thank Goodness Its Finished Friday, Finish It Up Friday, Fabric Frenzy Friday, and Show Off Saturday @ Sew Can She.