Preliminary Layout Sugar Block Club 2013 Quilt

The Sugar Block Club blocks are finished and I am ready to start putting them into a layout for a quilt top.  I have a small design wall in my sewing room, so this will not be the final layout by any stretch.  It does give me an initial feel for what will be going on here.  I am too heavy with the grays in the lower right corner so I will move that block and swap it out with the one in the upper left corner.  Then I think I will be happy.  I have some connecting blocks that will go in to this as well.  The blocks will not overlap when the top is finished, the entire set will be expanded outward and filled in inbetween with additional design work.  I want to leave a lot of white space to be quilted at a later date.  I have two white on white fabrics to use in completing this top, one is white with white dragonflies, the other is a white on white pin stripe.  

I bought two books used this past week, I was hoping they would come for my class but they did not arrive in time.  They are both on setting your quilt blocks and are good examples of breaking out of the "square" mold.  

The first one is Smashing Sets by Margaret J. Miller which I purchased on Amazon.com

The second one is Sensational Settings by Joan Hanson also purchased on Amazon.com

I like to purchase books used on Amazon.com, you can often pick up older titles for very little, just a couple dollars.  Nice to add to your library.  I also enjoy their downloads to my android through Kindle.

You can see that my setting resembles the cover photo of the Sensational Settings book, but it will be expanded and contain more elements like some that are in the Smashing Sets book.  Fun!

My husband John, now with his new glasses! and I went on a weekend tour, looking at longarms!  Wheee!  So much fun, I am keeping my fingers crossed that I am able to get the one I would really love to have.  So, I didn't get a lot of sewing done.   It was great fun though, we stopped in Squaw Valley and picked up my son Andrew and both he and John stitched on the longarm!  Yes they did!  And loved it!!!  More to be revealed!