Moving Mountains

One of the things that I'd read about assembling the blocks for Scrappy Mountain Majesties was to not press the seams until you have your final layout so that it's easier to nest them when you sew your rows together. Just about killed me initially, but once I got onto it I was happy for the speed that it provided. And, it worked like a charm when things had to come together.

At Linda's a few weeks ago, Jane and I quickly assembled two slightly different layouts before heading home.

Not wanting to mix up the rows, I grabbed a marker and some painter's tape from Linda and quickly made some labels. There are prettier markers, but they weren't going to be in use that long so no big deal. The challenge was that the tape had lost much of it's stickiness and was prone to falling off.

Since I was pinning them in place anyway, I took an old envelope, cut some scalloped circles and quickly cut two sets. Worked like a charm. Aren't they sweet? 

And they stayed on much better, which was a huge help because even though the quilts are scrappy there was a certain flow that I wanted to maintain.

With all of those seams to join in each row I had expected that putting the tops together would be a long, drawn out process but 

The layout shown above is totally scrappy. Our options were more limited the second time around because there are decidedly left and right facing blocks, so this one we paired as many as we could and then where we didn't have a match we inserted a similar colour. They are very similar but I think I prefer this one.

They need a good press but both are now finished, so I can happily add them to the pile....M