I'm working on my first watercolor quilt and have fallen in love with this process. It is totally like painting with cloth! Once I had the colors arranged as I wanted, the next challenge was to keep the rows and their relationship intact as I moved them from the planning table to the sewing machine and back. In the past when faced with this, I carefully labeled each square, but this time found a lazy way out that works great. I place a long piece of time-tape on each row, which keeps the individual pieces in the correct order without leaving any gummy residue or pulling on the threads of the cloth (you could also use blue painters tape, but NOT standard masking tape). I then label just the far left corner with the row number. Since I always label on the left, there is no need to indicate which end of the tape is right or left. The tape can be reused about 3-4 times before it loses enough tackiness to not reliably hold the material. This labeling also makes pressing easy; all even numbered rows are pressed in one direction, all odd number rows pressed in the opposite direction, so the rows go together easily and precisely when I get to that point in the sewing.
I'm working on my first watercolor quilt and have fallen in love with this process. It is totally like painting with cloth! Once I had the colors arranged as I wanted, the next challenge was to keep the rows and their relationship intact as I moved them from the planning table to the sewing machine and back. In the past when faced with this, I carefully labeled each square, but this time found a lazy way out that works great. I place a long piece of time-tape on each row, which keeps the individual pieces in the correct order without leaving any gummy residue or pulling on the threads of the cloth (you could also use blue painters tape, but NOT standard masking tape). I then label just the far left corner with the row number. Since I always label on the left, there is no need to indicate which end of the tape is right or left. The tape can be reused about 3-4 times before it loses enough tackiness to not reliably hold the material. This labeling also makes pressing easy; all even numbered rows are pressed in one direction, all odd number rows pressed in the opposite direction, so the rows go together easily and precisely when I get to that point in the sewing.
