Stress Free Block Setting

I love to lay out a quilt on my design wall, spending hours and sometimes days determining the EXACT placement of each block.

But that excitement wanes when I realize that I have to now take the blocks OFF of my design wall to sew them together AND keep them in the right order!

Over the years, I have used numbered pins…..

Using numbered pins

See more

….with some success, but invariably, at least one block gets pieced incorrectly!

As I got ready to piece this quilt……

…..I knew that it was SUPREMELY important that I NOT make any mistakes.

BUT WHAT TO DO!!!

Then I had an epiphany…..

WHAT IF I WRITE THE NUMBERS ON THE BLOCKS WITH A WASH-OUT MARKER???

This quilt will be washed after I finish it so I don’t have to worry about that…..so why not?

I started in the top left corner, marking it 1-1. The next block on that row was 1-2, the next was 1-3. The leftmost block in the second row was 2-1, then 2-2, 2-3, and so forth.

I wrote the number in either the first or second patch on the left-hand side of each block.

Once they were all marked, I was able to stack each row…..

….and head to the machine.

It was SO easy to piece the rows together because I could see at a glance if the blocks were in the right order…..

….or in the WRONG order…..

I did spritz out the numbers as I attached the rows to other rows…..

In no time flat, the top was pieced…..

….AND in the correct order!!

WHY didn’t I think about this before????