"Take A Picture..."

"... it will last longer!!"

We all know that playground taunt when one is stared at. But today I have a very real need for that advice! I'm making another wedding quilt! Spencer and Deborah are getting married on November 12th!

I asked them for their color choices and received an answer that "I can live with"... BROWN & GREEN! Oh my, how I love that color combination. It may be hard to part with this lovely when I'm finished.

My problem comes in the fact that when I want to make a scrappy-looking quilt, you know the kind that looks totally random, I'm not able to just approach it in a random way. What would happen if two block of the same color got positioned together? No, NO, NO... that will never do for an OCD girl like me.

So out comes my design wall (read- a large flannel sheet tacked up on the wall) and hours of careful placement and arrangement. But when you are talking about 336 pieces of fabric do you know how easily that design wall plan ends up in a muddled mess... I speak from experience here... it happens with too much regularity to suit me. So after having a minor anxiety moment I devised a plan. Not a new plan, of course, I've used it before with great success.

TAKE A PICTURE... IT WILL LAST LONGER...

I took photos of the design wall, from left to right of the first half of the quilt (yes, it is king sized), then uploaded them to my computer. Luckily I have a laptop, so I brought it in, set it up on the end of the ironing board and referred to it for careful RE-placement of my design. (Notice that my design wall has to turn a corner... that's what happens when you think sew big!)



I take one row at a time and stack the pieces on my ironing board, still arranged in my carefully placed blocks. I chain piece the three sub-segments together.  This is an offset block it goes together in two steps. When I get to the second step where I sew segments A & B together I pin their companion segment C to them to avoid more confusion!



Now you may wonder why I'm writing all of this out so carefully. Yes, I love to share good ideas... but mostly it is because next time I get into that minor anxiety moment and I'm thinking "I sure wish I could remember how I solved this problem last time" I will have the answer right here on my blog.