Working on New Designs

I love working on new block and quilt designs, especially it seems blocks.   Often times they don't get made up or don't end up in actual quilt patterns.     This year's block of the month though has been good for using some of the many blocks that I design.   I've continued to design for submission in various avenues.   One of those I'll be working on later this summer.  

Since I'm at a week long educational camp on energy this week and don't have anything that I can sew, I thought I'd ramble a bit on the process that i use for designing my block patterns.

Even though I do use computer software (Visio) in my designing, I start out the old-fashioned way of drawing my thoughts out on graph paper and then "color it in.  Often times this part of the process happens as I'm doodling during a meeting or just when I have a few minutes during the day.

Once the sketch looks okay to me, I draw it up in Visio and then play with the colors in the block again.   The little snippet to the left shows a bit of the next block for submission that I've completed this last week.  

Next step then is to actually make it in fabric so I can see how easily the block goes together and how it works.   the pic to the right shows the same small bit of the finished test block that the left one does, but in completed form   A Kona black background and Moda Marbles and Kaufman Fossil Fern fabrics were used for the stripes.   Yes, everythign is actually straight in the block, my pic is just off.   lol   this design is one that i'm planning on submitting for publication, so I won't be showing the complete block here at this time.

The next three things that are on my design plate include a quilt design for possible (hopeful) publication - I need to make up a sample top from that one when I get back home and look at writing instructions for it depending on what magazine I submit it to.  The second thing I'm working on is a mystery quilt for next year.   My quilt testing buddy and I will start that one in July so that we can make sure it works as it should.  And the final design project in the works is my wallhanging for the Stretching Art challenge this year. The ideas for it are in my head, but they need to get out of there and into fabric immediately because that quilt has to be done before the end of July.  =)

Gratitudes:
1. Getting paid for the 15 commissioned garments that have been finished today.

2. Good information from the program that I'm attending for one of my classes at school.