Layouts - How Many Blocks? Post 1

As this is becoming such a long post I have decided to split it into two. This first post discusses things that need to be decided upon when making any quilt, not just Raconteur 141, or even Raconteur - the Storyteller's Collection.

C6 Crystal Dreams

Some things that effect the number of blocks can be

1. colour arrangement - my original Raconteur quilt should have had one extra row but because of how the frame colours were laid out it meant I had to change too many of those for the colour pattern to lie as I wished. I had had enough of the quilt and so I left it. I could have planned the colour arrangement well before the five year mark..talk about leaving things for the last minute. Planning could have been done with just pen and paper.
2. the amount of overhang you like - mattress heights vary not only in different countries but also throughout one country. Now in Australia there are three different mattress heights. I have one quilt which now fits perfectly on our bed since our new mattress has a greater height than the previous one. Previously the quilt touched the floor. There are also available different height castors to raise or lower a bed height.
3. still to do with the amount of overhand is whether you want some of your design to go over the sides or if you only want it on the top of the bed. I like my design to go over the sides so I don't have to spend forever getting the quilt to lie just right so that the design is centred.
4. the number of blocks you want to make - there are seven blocks in each collection and sometimes you just reach  the limit of how many blocks you want to make. I had about thirty blocks leftover when I called it a day on my layout so I only needed to make another 12 blocks and I could have had the row I needed...such is life
5. the size of the borders -  I don't have a preference for border size. My method is to finish the quilt and then try different size borders until I find what suits the quilt. This does have a major downside in that some of my quilts turn out decidedly bigger than I originally wanted but such is life at least it looks balanced, in my opinion that is.

I will write up the next post later today if I get the chance, or else tomorrow and then post it with the calculations etc.