How Do You Connect Blocks?
 

When I have my blocks all up on the design wall, I have to go and get them one at a time to sew them together in rows, or I get confused.
Sew the first two together, get up, get the third one, go to the machine, sew it on, get up, get the fourth one, sew it on, etc.....
Although I get lots of exercise, there must be a better way? Or do others do it this way, too?

Watson

I've written numbers in Sharpie on flower head pins and stuck them in the blocks, although I discovered the hard way that the Sharpie wears off.

So now what I do is use paper. A friend gave me a set of cardstock cards, they're about 1.5" by 1" and have the row and column number printed on them:

row 1
column 1

row 2
column 1

And so forth. The little cards have holes punched in them, so I can pin them to the block.

This way I can pull the entire row off the wall and take them over to the sewing machine, and I know what order to sew them.

I take a photo and print it and use arrows. My neighbor uses yard sale dots. She puts the 2 same colored dots at seams to be connected. When shes done with the first row she moves and marks the next row the same way. yellow to yellow, green to green etc.

Mine is a little convoluted but it beats having to go up and down a stool.
I put white stickers on blue painters tape. (Why can't they make white
painters tape? Masking tape is too sticky). Mark each block by row....so
it's A1, A2, A3.. then B1, B2, B3, etc. Then after I've stuck all those stickers
on each block, I take lots of pictures. Then I take the blocks down...even
if it's not in order I have the stickers and photos to guide me to put them
back in order before sewing. I've been doing it for years and this system
has never failed me.

I just number them left to right, top to bottom. I cut up paper, write numbers on it and pin the little tags to each block.

Once I've got my layout finalized, I take white, 1" round sticky dots to label my blocks. Let's say I have 5 rows across, 6 down. I write on the dots A1, A2, A3, A4, A5. Second row B1, B2 and so forth till E5. I stick A1 dot close to the left edge of the block, A2 close to the right edge, so that when they are pinned, I can peek at them easily by just lifting the edge of the block ( not having to completely turn it over to make" sure-sure" I've got the right ones before sewing.

I then take row 1 blocks down, in order. I always pin in the same direction -- horizontally with flower head on the sewing edge. I just know that a pin head means "sew this side". Then, in the case of 5 blocks per row, I pin A1 and 2 together (peeking again for assurance that blacks are the way they should be) , sew, then do 3&4 same way. Press them open, join them with each other and A5. Then I get up and return the finished row to the design wall because I'm just so eager to see it up there. Some people might sew all 30 blocks before getting up, but I'm like a kid showing off her art to mommy after every two minutes of coloring!

I sew rows to each other after I have all of them sewn individually.

This method works for me organizationally, and keeps me from sitting too long and getting stiff.

oh, and I take pictures, too, as I go.

I stack them vertically, number the stack 1,2, 3 etc. and then sew stack 2 to stack 1, then stack 3 to stack 2. Learn this in a class from Libby Libman. Works with small quilts or king size quilts. Eleanor Burns uses a technique like this too. Bonnie Hunter sews blocks together this way and calls it webbing the quilt together.

I also take a pic. I don't print mine though. I usually just download them to the laptop and have it sitting open on the work table. Gotta love digital photography.

I usually sew 2 blocks together across the 1st row, press, put it back onto the design wall and get the next row and do the same pressing the seams the opposite way. Sometimes I'll do the complete row before I go to the next row. Just depends on how I feel at the time. I'm usually working on 2-3 quilt patterns at a time so I try now to get too much on my plate. I like working on a couple at a time so I only have to go to the iron once for all 2-3 patterns. I try to do one step a day so I don't get too confused......................which is very easy for me to get.

I open Microsoft Word, create a table, and write 1A, 1B, 1C,... 2A, 2B, 2C,... in the spaces, enough to cover all the rows and columns in the quilt. I print that out and take it to the quilt laying on the floor. I pin all the 1's in order in the upper left corner of the first row of the quilt, continue with the 2's, etc. Pinning the number into the upper left tells me which part of the block is "up". Then I take up the pieces one by one, stacking each row in order. I just finished doing an on-point quilt this way, and it worked just as well applied in a diagonal, although there were different numbers of blocks in each row.