Determining Your Layout

For me, figuring out the final layout of the blocks takes the most time, focus, and energy. I’ve been known to agonize over placement for ages and then decide at the end to just listen to my heart and do whatever feels right.

Step 1: Remind yourself what your final quilt size, quilt top layout, and blocks are.

Step 2: Decide which block will be Block A, B, C, D, E, F, and G within the layout. If you want to visualize and play with your layout and don’t want to draw everything out by hand, head to the Appendix to find a QR code to download and print the Quilt Top Layouts and Block Cutouts so you can cut out and arrange and rearrange to your heart’s content, or download the soft-copies of the files and use your computer design program of choice to finalize your layout.

Step 3: Once you’ve settled on your block order, head to your Quilt Top Layout (page 17) to figure out how many of each block you’ll need and make a note of this in your Fabric Planner Worksheet (page 166).

Looking to take your quilt top to the next level? Here are three ways to play with the layout of your blocks:

1. Add in corner blocks: Instead of simply rotating your blocks to “turn” corners, try using a different block to create a corner that looks like the blocks intersect (check out the corners in my Log Cabin and Stripes case studies).

2. Inverse blocks: Play with inverting the colors every other block. I’ve included “inverted” cutouts for each block so you can easily play with how this changes the design.

3. Alternate rotation: Try flipping every other block or a block here and there to see what cool patterns emerge (check out my Bullseye and Offset case studies to see this in action).

To help jump-start your creativity, you can see examples of inverting and rotating your blocks, as well as how the corners will look without using a different corner block on the individual block pages, in the Block Index. And if you're not sure where to start, don't forget to turn the page and try my favorite go-to design brainstorming exercise!