What to do, what to do . . .   Sometimes figuring how to lay out your quilt blocks once they’re made is the hardest part of making the quilt. I find that after I have spent all the time cutting and sewing the blocks, I’m not sure if I want the quilt to look like the original design I’ve been working on for the last several days!  That’s what design walls are for, you say?  Well, I have a design floor.  Somehow I’ve never gotten a design wall up anywhere, mostly because I have things hanging on every available wall in my house .  Here are four different ways of laying out this quilt.  Post your comments on which layout you like, and later I’ll let you know which one I chose.

A.

This is the original layout for my quilt. I saw The Love Note Quilt first on the Missouri Star Quilt Company’s YouTube channel, and I fell in love with it. So did my daughter, Stephanie! So now it’s going to be her daughter, Hope’s, baby quilt. As you can see, I laid the quilt pattern out  in a gradient  from light grey to dark red.  I’ve spent a little time getting it all put together. I really enjoyed making the quilt squares, and now it’s time to sew the rows together, but do I really want it to look this way?

B.

The patterns above and below are variations of the second pattern I tried.  In the layout above (B.) I kept the squares in the same order, simply turning them to create the X patterns.  By simply turning the blocks, I kept my original idea of a gradient from light grey to dark red. However, I don’t think it’s as apparent in this layout as it is in the first layout.

C.

In this layout (C.), I placed the blocks randomly but in the same layout as (B.), giving the quilt a more scrappy look. With the more scrappy placement of the blocks, some of the X pattern seems to disappear depending on which colors happen to be next to one another.

D.

Here’s a look at the last layout I did for this quilt.  The layout above was done with the blocks still scrappy (D).  It’s funny, but it wasn’t until after these were all laid out that I realized that they were in rows with each envelope block turned the opposite way.  You can see it if you look hard, but the actual appearance seems to be diagonal rows of envelope blocks.  I really like this one.  I like the way the alternating blocks create a white envelope made from the four blocks coming together.  One of the fun things about changing the layout is the secondary designs that appears when you put the blocks together.

This last layout (E.) is the same as the one above (D.) with the blocks back in a gradient from light gray to dark red~I like this one, too!  There are so many ways to lay out the blocks you’ve made for your quilt.   Just have fun designing your quilt.  Nothing is written in stone, so make it the way you want it to look.  Which one do you like the best?