Basic Design - The First Step

So, I like I said earlier, I am designing this quilt from start to finish. The theme is The Nightmare Before Christmas and Corpse Bride. My husband and I are HUGE Tim Burton fans, so much so that our vows that we said at our wedding were the ones from Corpse Bride. Beetlejuice (the movie and the cartoon) were both considered for subject matter, but we decided to keep it to just two movies. I may design a few blocks just for fun, we will see.

So the first thing I had to decide was the size of the over all quilt and the size of the individual blocks. We decided on a king sized quilt. That means the finished dimensions are supposed to be 78 x 80 inches according to our great hive mind Google. I decided the blocks should be 12 inches (not counting seam allowances). I think that should give me enough space to make the images readable, but not so large to become unwieldy. Well, 12x6 is 72 inches. If I ad some spacing, that should get me close to those dimensions. I don't care if I am spot on, I want easy math.

I also wanted to give a bit of a visual breather, so not every 12 inches is going to be a "focal" block. That will give me some space to just play around with patterns and movement 'a la' crazy scrap quilting techniques. Very "Sally"-eque!

Okay, enough playing with gifs. I promise. I worked up a quick over all pattern (seen below). The numbers will be focal blocks, the unnumbered will be scrap square. You can see my MSPaint prowess in action.

I hope you follow and enjoy my creative process! Feel free to leave suggestions or comments, I would love to hear from you!