Design Time

 Good Morning Monday!

Today I will continue working on sewing the Magic Stars blocks together, I have three of five rows half done minus one block that needs some help. So I'll begin my sewing time with seam ripping and trying again on that block. 

Over the weekend with all the blocks completed I began arranging them on the design wall.  But before I did that I pulled out my random quilt notebook and did a little diagram of 5 x 5 one inch squares to help with the layout prior to getting up on the ladder and moving blocks around.

After counting how many blocks I had of each color I did a lay out by color. The only randomness in this quilt took place in the fabric shopping. Each block is half purple, but each one has a different purple fabric. I chose the purple fabrics first then went looking for contrasting fabrics to go with them. That's not too random, but I didn't plan how many of each contrasting color I would use, just looked for the best fabrics I could find to go with the purples I had chosen. I purchased fat quarters for this project and found them over the course of several trips to our LQS. I also used a few fabrics from my stash. That left me with multiples of some colors and a couple of one offs.

Once I had done the layout on paper I started moving blocks around on the design wall. I've not done any such pre-planning before and was glad I did, as it made it much easier and faster to get the blocks arranged on the wall. So this was my first lay-out. I wanted yellow in the center - it's the brightest of the contrast colors and I wanted to draw the eye to the center of the quilt. 

 All three yellows together turned out to be too much. So I grabbed my notebook and colored pencils and went at it again. I moved two of the yellows out to the corners and rearranged everything else too, except the original center block. I brought the greens in closer to the center and connected the oranges into a diamond pattern around the center. Blocks with teal fabrics got moved out to the opposite corners from the yellows and that left me with just the two red blocks and two random color blocks to fit in along the outsides. 

I liked this layout much better, but I had just randomly placed blocks by color and the arrangement of which block of each color went where had to be adjusted. I know there are quilters out there who can do fabulous quilts with seemingly random placements of blocks, I've seen them and admire those who can do such things. I can't. I need balance and symmetry, and the color placement in this layout just didn't cut it.

This time I didn't do a sketch - since that was basic color only. So it was stand back and look, move up and down the ladder, switch blocks out and stand back to look again. I wound up having to replace a block that, though I think it's really pretty by itself, just didn't work anywhere I put it in the quilt. After making a new block to replace it I finished the new arrangement. There are still some blocks that I would rather have different fabrics, but I chose the best I could from what was available at the time. I'm content enough with the layout now that I'm keeping it. The blocks that I'm not so fond of I've got on the outer edges, keeping the ones I think are closest to my original idea in the center. Not all the purples show as purple in the photos. I think they will show better once the top is finished and I can get a picture in the sunshine. 

Here is the block that just didn't work in the quilt, and beside it is a sample block of a smaller version of the same quilt. My friend Dorian of Ridge Top Quilts worked out the dimensions and posted them on her blog. When I saw what she'd done I realized that I had enough fabric left from the fat quarters I had purchased for the original quilt to make a second smaller one. 

 

 

 

 The fabric is all cut for that one and I'm using it as a leader/ender project while I put the large quilt together. Once the larger quilt is done this will become a focus project on it's own. Now that I've spent the time looking over the various pictures I've taken of the larger version I think I will delete the fabrics that I'm unhappy with in the big quilt from this project. Some of the original fabrics have been traded out already, so this little quilt will not be an exact copy of the big one.

I'm linking up with Judy for Design Wall Monday at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts

I'm linking up with Beth for Monday Making at 

Love Laugh Quilt

 I hope your week is fun and productive. Stay safe and well.