THE PLAN

Thought I'd show you a close up of the fabrics that I added to my to my stash when I went to the AQS show in Knoxville last month.  Those on the left were in a bin of fat quarters for $1.00; now who could pass that up?

Those on the right will be great for baby blankets.  I've got to make a couple for  babies in Greece--my husband's great niece or nephew--not sure which yet so I don't know if I'm going to be needing blue or pink; I should find out soon.

The fabric in the middle is a 1/2 yard cut.  I thought it would work well with the baby quilt that I'm just starting, but the background is too white, so it will go in the stash closet.

I've never had a really systematic way of planning my quilts before, but this time I found a method.  I figured about how big I want it to be (for a crib).  From there I was able to decide on the number and size of blocks.

I ended up with 5 rows of 6 (8 1/2 inch) blocks.  I am using 5 different fabrics.  Perfect!

Then I got out a pad of paper, wrote A,B,C,D,E on the top line and arranged those letters (one for each fabric) how I thought might work.  But since I'm not a trained artist that still didn't tell me quite how it would look. 

So I assigned a color to each letter and colored each letter in to a sort of block shape:

Although it's nowhere near the colors  I'm using  (They were the only markers I had.) , at least it let me see the layout.  Pretty pleased with that, so my next step was to cut the fabric in to appropriate size squares and lay them out.

This is for the quilt with bunnies, so I placed them where I thought they would look best.  I did rearrange those little critters a few times before I was happy.  And I had (in my stash, of course) a great little bright pink Chocolate Lollipop fabric for the binding.   VIOLA, THE PLAN!

Oh, and I will be getting back to some knitting again soon too and this will be what's up next.  I'll be making a vest for one of my grandson's 11th birthday.

And the needles (quilting and knitting) keep moving!