I have just returned from a month away, relaxing, biking, kayaking and wine drinking in the finger lakes in New York State. We are just 3 hours away and have spent the last 20 years visiting the lake area. The trip is about as perfect as you can get except I don’t take my sewing machine since we have friends and family visiting all month. The only downside of going away is not sewing. Now I’m back and jumping into finishing about 16 small art quilts for two fall shows. While away many of my quilts hung in a show at our local public library. I sold three quilts from the show which was a nice surprise!
But before finishing the quilts I pieced before vacation, I had some ideas swimming around in my head which I JUST HAD to make. I made a small beach scene with dunes and a small yellow flower. I made five red poppy sets for two poppy quilts I will make later this month. Then, as I was unpacking fabric I bought on vacation (HEY! I always find fabric stores no matter where we go!), I was “grabbed” by one of the prints I bought….I had to create something with this for my fall shows. I pulled out some fabrics to go with it, still without a design. You can see the print and the initial five fabrics I selected in the second photo. I was thinking of something geometric and did some sketches last night. Geometric art quilts are fun to make, I love how 
they look, but they are not popular sellers. Several are hanging semi-permanently in our house at the moment….
So this morning I got up and decided to try a totally abstract, curved piecing, design-as-I-go small art quilt, pieced on a slant. The improvisational quality of these quilts is so much fun! I added a few more fabrics to the mix (see photo), cut strips about 3″ wide and dove in. I pieced it from the middle out to either side, aiming for a size around 12″ x 16″. I ended up at 15″ x 16″. Not too bad 
for my lack of a real plan for this design.
Sometimes I begin a project like this and get to the end feeling….UMMMM….. But today, I finished piecing this art quilt and really liked it! Probably doesn’t hurt that the colors are some of my favorite autumn colors, which is the name of the quilt….
“Autumn Colors”.