Monday, April 5, 2010

GAA final layout


I spent several hours working on my Great American Afghan last weekend... several hours! I really struggled to come up with the layout for my project. I decided I would probably never be totally happy with the layout so I decided to just finalize the layout and start stitching. I got ten... that's 10!!!! blocks stitched together... very tedious, very tiring, back breaking work. Took a break with my son to have some dinner and he kept glancing over at the afghan which was laid out on the floor near the dining room table.

Finally I asked, "What!? What is it?!" He said, "you should have listened to me mom!" I knew he was right because as I was stitching things together I noticed I had two really dark squares together... it looked terrible. I unstitched the two dark blocks and then I decided to unstitch all of them... did I tell you? That was 10 blocks to unstitch and hours of work! Argh!!!! I stacked them all up and, as I walked away, I told my son, "Go crazy! Figure it out! I am over it! I've looked at it too much and I just can't figure it out!" I took a shower, put on my jammies, and then sat in a chair as my son CAREFULLY and THOUGHTFULLY went to work.

He started with the Spiraling Square in the center and then made an "X" with the two diagonals reaching to the far four corners. The two blocks with duplicate stitch, Happy Anniversary square and Son's square, are opposite of each other on the diagonal. The colorful Under the Sea and Three Trees squares are also opposite one another on the diagonal. He proceeded to organize the squares by color. He set to work by alternating the blocks not only by color and value (light v.s. dark) but he also explained that some blocks had up and down (vertical) design elements while other blocks had designs which were more centered, so he arranged them so this element would alternate as well.

Yes! A thousand times YES! I should have listened to him! Sure hope I don't sound like one of "those moms"... who just go on and on about their brilliant children... but I tell ya, my son blew me away.

2 comments:

affectioknit said...

Kids are awesome! I can't wait to see the finished afghan!

Kim said...

I can't wait to see the finished afghan too. Ha, ha! I am procrastinating on the sewing together part! It's time consuming. I got distracted by hats... always more fun to start new projects with new, pretty yarn, than to finish projects. Why is that!?