My Quilt Design Process 3

Now here's the fun part. I picked out my fabric, washed and ironed it. This is it all layed out on my drafting table:



You can see that the basic three colors of my initial palette are still there but I've added a few more colors: a lighter green, a brown. And the gray is only in the patterned pieces not as a more pronounced solid.

Because I am a web designer by trade I'm very comfortable using PhotoShop. So before I washed the fabric, I took digital pictures of each piece. In PhotoShop I open a new file that is the same proportions as my finished quilt and I use the grid to section off each block. I transfer each fabric swatch onto the layout, shrink it down, and crop it to the size of a full block:



Now I can duplicate the fabric layers and use masks to get the smaller block shapes:



I save the file over again and again with new names as I get new ideas. Or if an idea is just not working but I don't want to completely trash it. Like in these examples I'm questioning my initial inspiration to make every other block different. If I do continue down that path, I need to think more about which patterns are showing up where. Or I'll need to get more patterned fabrics. Or something!

I know that this won't look exactly like the final quilt because I end up making changes as I cut and sew the pieces. But by using this technique I can be confident that I am starting on a good path at least.

PART 6 - First Block
PART 5 - Quilt Math
PART 4 - Give Opinions
PART 3 - Fabric
PART 2 - Inspiration
PART 1 - Palette