My Quilt has Arrived in L.A. – Quilt Con Charity Quilt

I made a charity quilt as part of the Modern Quilt Guild’s Charity Quilt Challenge. We were given a specific colour palette and were required to use “Improv With Intent” as the technique for creating our quilts. No patterns were allowed.

My Quilt Con Charity Quilt titled “Flying Colors”. Pieced and Quilted by Anita LaHay of Daydreams of Quilts.

As soon as I saw the colour palette I thought of the Hindu Holi Festival and the North American “Colour Runs” where people throw the bright coloured corn starch powders through the air. I started searching on Google for images of the festival and the Colour Runs and created a Pinterest Board of inspirational images. The Calgary Colour Run website states that the run celebrates “healthiness, happiness and individuality.” I thought this was perfect given that I plan to donate this quilt to the Alberta Cancer Foundation and wouldn’t every person fighting cancer love to celebrate healthiness, happiness and individuality once they have beaten cancer?

I used the technique “Improv With Intent” to convey the colours flying out the bottom left side of the quilt. My main improv choice was “slash and insert” to show movement and direction. The movement of the powders is continued across the quilt with coloured thread. There are ribbons, circles indicating powder clumps and particles, arrows and clouds of powder filling the white space of the quilt. The grey fabric indicates the streets people are running and celebrating on. The majority of the white space is filled in with white cloud quilting to represent the clouds of powder in the air and the breath being expelled by the people running.

When I was piecing the quilt I originally planned to have the colours running from left to right (blue, red, yellow) along the bottom edge of the quilt and exploding upwards but when I turned the top sideways to press seams I realized I liked that much better. Since I was free in the improvisational technique to do whatever I wanted I changed my layout plan halfway through.