Hey! Ho! Here we go with Week 3 of the improv QAL. I read the prompts when the email from Shannon and Amanda arrived on Sunday but I couldn’t get round to doing anything with fabric until Tuesday. This time delay worked in my favour as I woke up on Tuesday full of ideas and ready to tackle triangles the improv way. I generally have to let ideas percolate around the back of my brain for a while before acting on them – I’m not known for spontaneous creativity!

In their email Shannon and Amanda shared some handy information about types of triangles which probably helped me get thinking…

• Monday – focus on getting comfortable cutting triangles. Remember to keep your noncutting hand out of the way and look in the direction you want the cut to go.

I layered two strips of fabric before cutting a row of freehand equilateral triangles.

I stitched the triangles into two rows.

I set one row of triangles at an angle so I could frame them with triangles.

• Tuesday – zoom in on the triangle details and play with a smaller scale.

Little triangles framed by bigger triangles….

• Wednesday – make a few different types of triangles and then slice them up. Dice ’em up again and reassemble!

Some freshly cut triangles and the remaining row of equilateral triangles diced into peculiar triangles!

A block of sliced and diced triangles.

• Thursday – lean into the wonk by creating scalene and obtuse triangles. Really lean into the big angles and different size sides. For our information: Scalene triangle = none of the sides are the same length; Obtuse triangle = the largest angle is greater than 90º.

My attempts at Scalene and Obtuse triangles – I think both overlap the definitions …

• Friday – for today’s composition, consider playing with a few different types of triangles within the same block to see how they play off one another.

I stitched my Scalene and Obtuse triangles from Day 4 into a block. Created lots more triangles but my Scalene triangle morphed into a Right Angle triangle! See photo below….

Here’s all my Wk 3 Blocks:

A mixed bag for sure! The short version – I started the week with a bit of a plan. This fore-thought rather than just diving into the fabric with a rotary cutter created more pleasing results (to  my view anyway). The long version – Exploring Triangles definitely felt more comfortable than last weeks Polygons. I’m happy with two of the blocks. As Laura suggested in her comment last week I am discovering more about my creative self AND what I don’t like about Improv. One thing I knew for sure before beginning the #30DaysofimprovQAL is that I place a high value on practicality. One of my first responses to any object is, ‘what’s it for?’ which quickly leads to, ‘does it work?’. All this wanton chopping of precious fabric and the creation of lots of lumpy, bumpy seams does not appeal to my practical side.

All those lumpy, bumpy seams – so impractical!

And the blocks I’ve created so far? Well! I can see them as the out-working of a learning process but I see no practical future for them!

I’ll be back for the final week – guessing it must involve curves!

Allison