Organization is key to not confusing yourself – laying out a big quilt

I have only made one large quilt in the past. Most of my projects are wall hangings or throw quilts or baby quilts. When I started working on a quilt for our bed, I knew it was going to be a bit of a project to keep it all organized.

Just one section has over 100 pieces pieces! So it was a lot to keep it straight as I worked. Fortunately, the pattern was very good at helping keep it together during the cutting and initial sewing.

I wrote about paper piecing the first sections together in this post, where I showed the process of putting the arcs together. Each color had 14 sets, left and right sections. You can see in the picture that the bottom set has paper extending from the ends. This is used during the next step of assembly.

After I completed all the arcs, I went on to do the sections that would be sewn around the arcs.

Once I had all the subsections complete, I needed to have everything together so I could lay out the entire top.

Layout of the design

I like to lay my quilts out on my bed so I can take pictures of layout options to decide which I like best. I knew that this one would be too big to fit on my design board (a piece of foam core with flannel wrapped on it) and would take some time to put together, so I laid a sheet on the bed first. I then played with the design until I had one I liked. Walt helped me pin all the pieces to the sheet so I can roll it up when I am not working on it.

Sewing the subsections into larger subsections

I carefully removed the pins from a set of pieces and transferred them to my smaller design board. Each group is then sewn together into larger section until I complete a square or triangle. The triangles go along the edges of the quilt. During the sewing process, you remove the paper as instructed.

Once a section is complete, I pin it back in place and get the next section. I only need to unroll the sheet to the area I am working on, and in the picture you can see it along the top edge.

I have reached the halfway point of getting these larger areas done. Once I have them all done, I will then sew them all together.

As I mentioned in the paper piecing post, the pattern is Bali Wedding Star by Quiltworx. I have no affiliation with them.