this is a great tut. thanks.

THANK YOU SO MUCH! I love this tutorial!!! I've been photo-copying my fabrics, cutting the printed papers & pasting them together to see how they'll look. Tedious and not eco-friendly... This method is awesome! I have MS Office 2003 on my computer so don't have to feel bad about not being able to afford EQ7 software anymore - and - I won't be wasting paper. Thank you for showing this processes so clearly and simply.

Kathleen

Does anyone know how to use excel to sort the color blocks into a random layout for a scrappy quilt?

can this be done on Open Office. It is similar Windows Office.

Yes, as noted in Lucy's original message.

Just FYI, when you add "View -> Toolbars -> Drawing", they will show up at the bottom of Calc's window.
Also, see message #10.

I have a several tips:
*) If you want to focus on the "quilt", you can hide the columns & rows that are outside of the "quilt".
*) You can set the cells to an exact size via:
Format -> Columns -> Width
Format -> Rows -> Height.
*) If you have a particular base layout that you want to reuse later, then save it as a template, rather than a spreadsheet. Make its name something that will remind you as to what that layout pertains (e.g., 30x30_2in_sq). Then you can create a spreadsheet from that template and save setup time.

I'm not going to try to show how to do that for all spreadsheet software & versions, as it is easy to search in your Help or on the Internet for your particular software & version.

Great, great tute! I've been looking for an affordable, used EQ but now maybe I won't have to. Thanks so much.

I just scan an actual piece of my fabric and use that.

thank you so much for this idea!

wow going ro have to give that a try.. thanks for sharing.