Back to the Plaids

Well there they are! Sitting waiting to be sorted!  One of the advantages of a large design wall is to spread blocks out and step back and take a good look at them. If you are space limited, taking pictures and looking at them on your computer is another good way to sort things out.

So one way to make everything fit would be to trim all the blocks to the smallest block.  But that would kind of defeat the purpose, since there is a large size difference, leading to a lot of wastage!

 Another way might be to arrange the blocks by just matching widths and make a bar quilt, as above.

But I want to make this a more random arrangement I'm going to start by matching the blocks by 2's.

Then take 3 of the pairs and add a third.  That will make the center of the block arrangement.

 When piecing these slightly off blocks it's important to line them up, ignoring the tag ends and long bits.  The line of the seam needs to be perpendicular to the top edge.

Now it's time to straighten up the edges a bit before sewing the long seams.

Once the center is together then build 2 more rows of 3 on either end.

Once those rows are sewn on the final set around the border can be arranged.

Notice the smaller blocks tend to be in the center and the larger blocks are on the outside.  While the inside rows are 7 units long the last 2 outside rows are only 6 units.  Another way to randomize the overall distribution of the different size blocks.

You can see I did have to add one 'copeing' strip at the bottom right.  Otherwise it's pretty square (it varies about 1/2 inch from side to side and top to bottom after trimming. ( 31.5" x 44")

Speaking of trimmings that's all that I had to trim off.  Granted I did not trim a lot of the tag ends in the seams because this fabric proved to be very 'thready'.  I figured trimming would only aggravate that situation.

Since the homespun is kind of course I think I will use a nice soft flannel plaid.  Here's what I have in my stash.  I'm kinda leaning toward the one on the right. After the busy center the simple one makes more sense to me.  What do you think?!
I think in olden times quilts were constructed like this a lot.  Utility quilts could be wonky, why not? As long as they use every percious scrap to make them.  cheers, Claire W.