Recently I’ve been making reference to the Violet area and the Yellow area without going into detail about my construction methods. Those methods have changed considerably since I first started to assemble blocks.

Initially I was completing diagonal rows of blocks in sequence beginning in the upper left corner and joining each row as the blocks were completed. It was my plan to continue in that manner across the body of the quilt. However, after completing row five I realized that I was going to have to address a plan for color and value choices in the central area of the quilt if I moved on to the next row. I was not yet ready to do that, and I wanted to keep my options open.

Above you see the upper left section of the quilt completed with relatively bold colors. I knew for a fact that I wanted to do the same with the remaining blocks along the perimeter of the quilt. Therefore, it was necessary to divide the quilt in such a way as to leave the central area for the end.

I came up with the following divisions.

The idea is to finish the outer sections first and then work on the central section.

The Lower left is what I am referring to as the Violet area.

Above you see the Violet area butted up against the upper left area.

I’ve been constructing the Violet area row by row in the same manner as I worked on the upper left. I have taken a break from this area, however, because I want to order some more blue fabrics to work on the last two rows of this area.

The upper right is what I am referring to as the Yellow area. This is the area on which I am currently working.

I’ve been taking a different approach to this area. Rather than working row by row I am making many blocks and will begin to arrange them when I feel that I have enough blocks for the first two rows. Above you see a variety of blocks for both the orange/yellow rows and also the yellow rows. Some of these blocks will be formally introduced tomorrow on Farmer’s Wife Friday.

The lower right area is as large as the area in the upper left area. That was quite quite a bit to handle at once, so I may end up dividing the lower right into two smaller areas such as these:

I would call this the Blue area.

I would call this the Green area.

Going back to the upper left area… if I were to do it over again I would be likely to divide that area into two areas as well…

I would call this the red area,

and I would call this the Orange area.

So for future Farmer’s Wife quilts my plan would be as such with seven areas.