We all have our favorite part of the quilting process. Picking the fabric, cutting it up, making our blocks, arranging the blocks, sewing on borders, or quilting it all together, but there is only one part of that process that brings together everyone in my house.
Yes, even the non-quilting boys, and that's playtime on the design wall.
Our particular setup is less of the wall, more of the almost freestanding bit of fabric on a frame that the younger cats love to play around. It leans against our perpetually unused fireplace in various states of togetherness, surrounded by chairs and the remains of previously planned out projects. I think currently there's the unused block from my Yellow Brick Road and some of Mom's computer design experiment printouts.
So say I'm laying out a quilt on the wall. Sometimes it's an individual process, but more often, on both my quilts and my mom's, it's a group endeavor. Mom and I take turns moving blocks, experimenting with their positions and changing the whole thing round at least twice, if not more. 
Then Dad wanders over on a break from poem writing and makes a comment about a particular chunk. While we're trying to figure out exactly what it is he's trying to say, Post or Mira decide to just go ahead and start changing the bottom row of the quilt. And my brother...Well, my brother has to be asked for his opinion most of the time, but when the recipient is one of his friends he is willing to get up from his computer and give it.
Maybe it's the experimental part of it. The chance to find new and different combinations, simply by rotating a few little blocks. All the pictures in today's post are close ups of some of my less than successful experiments, the ones that I got a condensed view of on my camera and ended up not liking so much. Pretty, but not right and interesting, but still slightly off.
I wonder what results I'll get in my next design wall experiment. ^_^
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