As I have worked on many projects, I find one habit I always do when starting a project is setting up a notebook to keep the items I began to collect with that certain project. I welcome your feedback on this subject today. And wish to ask sharing methods for keeping those project references most handy as you construct them.
My project notebook
I found as I begin a project I first begin a new notebook. That notebook usually holds my notes and any printed source & references to be handy for me to refer to as i work my projects and to be so organized. My notebook becomes a guide book and sort of a journal of my materials and guides for those projects. And I have collected a few notebooks over time yet I find them to be quite helpful as a guide book and reference to look back with once my project has been completed.
Usually I begin by first add some clean white paper for writing notes along with clear protector pockets to a binder. The clear protector sheets I find so useful for my patterns and items to keep. I place my printed material sources in them and use them to keep receipt of purchase for my projects and items that I may need to look upon often with. Sort of keeps them clean and safe from wear and use.
Once I began this project , I knew that I needed a chart to refer to when sewing the strip pieces together for order. Felt a guide handy with the layout would be most helpful, so I found myself working on a grid sheet to make a chart for a layout reference.
One other question I have for you is... how do you go about charting your quilt and other projects when with the need for a layouts when sewing them?
Charting a layout
I set up a chart this weekend to reference my fabric pieces.
As I began to play around with all the cut strips and finding many ways to layout out, I realized 2 items needed and developed to refer to as I worked on this project. I needed a guide for the order flow of the pieces when laying them out to retain somehow the layout choices with the variety of strips. And a guide to sew them once the layout was chosen. Something to keep the layout organized & refer with my fabric pieces. The guide chart I developed, has been most useful , a great tool to play around with the color layout & to reference with. Something of use both now and later. One of my methods keeping organized as I work my projects and as to have my materials and items collected among a notebook to journal them.
I added my layout chart over the weekend to my notebook and find it has been very useful as I played around with the pieces.
I welcome any feed back among those methods when keeping items
handy and to reference with, and to be organized when working projects.
And sharing methods with what type of tools that may become most useful.
Here is one of my methods with my weekend work
developing my grids into charts for guides. I have outlined some of those steps below
and hope you may find them useful.
A Quilt Grid Develops:
A grid is a fairly simple task to do today when using an office suite program on the computer.
Graph paper is another handy and quick tool paper to work up a self contained pattern for a quilt.
However I felt this pattern may need some extra help being I had so many pieces of fabric to organize at once. So I headed to my computer to open up Excel to help me achieve my need for a reference chart when sewing the pieces together as my guide tool. For now I will share just the basics of my development but maybe in time I can share more information and links for those other sources and aids we all find we may need as we do one project with a source of guide tools.Sounds like a future post brewing up!
But again as to keep things basic. I will list the steps I under took in making my grid sheet guide.
Setting up a template:
My template was developed with 2 types of worksheets involved. By preparing 2 different grids I was able to combine both grid list once the were set up and finalize my guide template and later list the fabric & placement in them as my guide sheet and saving it and remaining as my guide chart sheet and savings the original worksheet and template for later uses.
I formatted the chart to my liking as i worked up the template and naming one each of the grids composed that I would combine to make my guide chart as one -" color guide" and two " layout" and then to saving the entire file/template.
My formatting processes were to critique the chart and place draw lines in to show up when printing , and forming the heights to hold the assigned letter & characteristics (listing color and print and positions) among fields. (I may plan to make more adjustments later along with some color schemes added) but for now, sticking with the basics to form my reference guide chart to make use now. Once those steps were done I combined the 2 source grids into a new worksheets by copying the layout grid first with a newly formed worksheet file and saving my other as a template for later uses.
My new template formed and ready to fill those positions with a letter character assigned to them in the manner such as A, B, C... etc... and ready for my use.
Chart is a useful tool when quilting.
By separated & identify each strip and using the color coding grid together I assembly a chart that I can now refer to and have a template to use later among my quilting projects.
So tell me... as to share... what aids do you utilize
and find you may have had to developed among your project ventures.
I welcome your comments on this subject!
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