We are now back to the regularly-scheduled story of my Not So Straight and Narrow Quilt.

Not So Straight and Narrow Quilt

At the end of the last episode I had gotten all of the individual quilt blocks made, at which point I needed to decide exactly how to lay them out. There are a lot of possibilities when you have 56 blocks! Some things were settled pretty early on as I was making the blocks, like that the direction of the pieced strips would alternate between vertical and horizontal. But to finalize the exact placement, I had to lay it all out on my living room floor, since it’s the only space I have that’s big enough for a queen-sized quilt!

I always take photos and look at them while I’m rearranging, because I just can’t get far enough away from something this big, especially when it’s on the floor! I alternate between looking at the actual quilt and looking at the photos on the camera, trying to find things that aren’t working for me.

With this one I started by looking at issues with the primary block colors, like those two coral blocks near the top left that are diagonal from each other.

I like to make sure there is variation in the positions of the pieced strips, so that they aren’t all lined up the same way next to each other or across a row. The last two horizontal blocks on the second row were bugging me, so I flipped one around to switch the top and bottom.

I also spend a fair amount of time looking at the layout of all the various little colored bits in the piecing to make sure that there is nice movement in the quilt. I want the eye to be led around the quilt as it hits the bright blue color over and over, or the brown color over and over, that sort of thing. I don’t want any single color to be all lumped together in one spot.

As you can imagine, all of this takes some doing! There were TONS more intermediate changes and photos than I’m showing you here.

The above was my final layout for this quilt. I ALWAYS take a picture of the final layout, so I have a record I can refer to as I’m piecing the quilt together. I would definitely not want to get confused and have to figure this all out again!!

At this point I was curious what this quilt would look like in a slightly more subdued color palette. I think maybe I was still nervous about that bold coral color! So, I took the photo of the final arrangement and performed a little Photoshop magic on it, replacing the coral color with a more subdued green color.

(yawn)

Reaffirmed in my choice to use the coral, I sewed these blocks together and had a finished quilt top!

In the last and final installment tomorrow, my little (queen-sized) quilt gets quilted!