Do you remember those tile puzzles where you had to slide the tiles around to make a picture?

Or put the numbers in order.

Arranging quilt blocks can be a lot like those puzzles…but in my case I have 156 squares not 16.

Here is how the quilt top was arranged when I got it.

I did not want to copy anyone elses arrangement.  The point of re-arranging the blocks on this top was to make it my own interpretation, so I didn’t look at pictures on-line or in books, there are hundreds of pictures out there for inspiration but it is too tempting to copy.

I recently finished another vintage fan quilt and I liked the arrangement of blocks I came up with for it.

But I wanted something different…. So I did a few doodles of different ideas, but I needed to see the actual blocks in place. (which is where the puzzle feeling come in to play) Here is one of the arrangements that I really liked

The only problem with this one is that I had 12 blocks leftover, should I try to add them in ?  It might ruin the pattern.  I slept on it and this morning I rearranged the blocks to this

This one uses all the blocks and will finish at 78″ x 84.5″  and I might add a border to make it a bit larger.  I am happy with the layout and I will spend some time now rearranging some of the blocks to distribute the colors a bit better but this is basically how I plan to set the blocks.  I cant wait to see them all sewn together!

Happy Quilting

Tim