The pattern on the fabric is not at all rectilinear but I know what you mean, I'm going to think about this! Have put it all together although once again the back is not square with the front exactly, I never cut my batting before using it (pure cowardice!) and I think that is my problem. I am going to quilt feathers by hand for the first time in the yellow rectangles and have to find out how to do this. One weird thing happened, all the feathers I drew with water erasable blue pen have faded. Very puzzled, has not happened before. Can only think old pen or high humidity here in Venezuela but it is very hot and not raining yet.

If a design is rectilinear I would use CIRCULAR MOTIFS as it compliments the design, thus fans or circles work well. Many quilters from the past used the fan motif, because it works up FAST. I am a hand-quilter and love the simple, fast designs. You can use a walking foot to do it by machine.

Margarita,
You go girl. I have not done marking with tape. What a great idea. Your design is perfect.
Good luck and a great rest of the weekend.

Terry, I am going to fiddle around with the blocks probably this afternoon to make a change from marking the quilt. I'll do this on paper. I will gladly post a photo of a block marked with masking tape but it will be step by step I think. Remember I haven't done this before! Giles idea and mine is that I should work from the outside in but I am going to do it on paper first to see if that works and what the spacing could be. Hopefully I can use the wider, one inch, tape. I will only put the masking tape down for the outside and then move it for the next inner square, I'll certainly let you know how it goes.

Thanks Juliet. I will have a look at the free link and see how that works. Good luck with your quilting.

This is so very interesting and very pretty design!! Wondering if you could post a picture when you have your blocks marked with masking tape.
A TQS shout out " A BIG THANK YOU TO EVERYONE" for all the great tips and ideas.

Right you are Ritzy, how lucky am I? I wrote and asked him about it and here is his reply:

"The program I used is called Illustrator from Adobe, its expensive and very good but the learning curve is maybe a bit steep. This seems to be the best free equivalent http://inkscape.org/ the important thing is to establish a scale when you open the document the rest of it is practice, quite boring unless you have a creative goal in mind."

So for the computer clever among you there you have it, I think if I tried I would never get this quilt done! So Rita, I am sorry this is not a free programme included with your Mac but perhaps this information may be useful to you. Good Luck.

Wow! You better keep that boy around.

Sure, I'll ask him - he was pretty impressed himself, I think he hadn't used it before and was enjoying playing around with it. He actually sorted out where I should begin on each block or rectangle so there wouldn't be any contiguous (next to each other?!) gaps!

I am wondering what was the programme your friend used on a mac? I wish I had it too. Any chance you could find out and let me know please?

I'm busy marking the feathers now but yes, when I have a few blocks done I will post a photo. I am interested to see what it looks like too!

That is a beautiful design, Margarita--so perfect for the layout of blocks you have. Look forward to seeing it again--maybe a progress photo on the quilting?

I love the quilting design and can't wait to see the finished quilt! I hope your little fingers are flying...

Nancy

Margo, thank you so much - again! This is obviously what my computer geek did for me but all explained in english, wonderful! The feathers might take me a while but I am hoping to whizz around the blocks with masking tape which takes the strain out considerably, no eyeballing just eyes open. I am so looking forward to stitching this, it is the first time I have ever marked a quilt top before stitching, just the feathers here but so worthwhile - I hope! Thanks again.