How I plan out a quilt

I thought I would share with you how I plan out a quilt from sketch to finish. Currently I do not have quilting software although it is on my wish list so for now I plan out my quilts on paper.

Below are four fabrics that I am using on my next quilt project this is going to be a gift so I may hold off on the final reveal. I thought it would be easier to visualize this project and the planning process if you knew the fabrics going into it.

As you can see my main fabric has kitties in it and I wanted them to be the focus and the other three to compliment it, I would call this a minimalist color palette almost monochromatic except for the red. I also wanted to play with the block puss in the corner since this is a quilt with kitties. I found dozens of different versions and settled on two of them the oldest and simplest I could find being block B in my final design. and the other a slight variation to add interest. Below I did a preliminary sketch of what I wanted the quilt to look like. I say preliminary because I didn't use my ruler and I wasn't 100% sure.

Then I redrew the design on graph paper using a ruler and pencil. Next I photocopied the image on my printer.

This gives me nice clean crisp lines and allows me to audition different color layouts without redrawing the entire design. Below you can see I colored in a couple of different options.

When I settled on one I started to figure out how many squares I needed and about how much yardage. The yardage per square  or squares per yardage can be calculated with the Robert Kaufman free quilt calculator app. This is a great app it even does borders and backing what a great tool. Now I had only so much yardage out of some of the fabrics so that ended up dictating the design a little I wasn't able to do my original  color layout. or the number of blocks I wanted to make the size I was hoping for.

In the end I settled on the design below figuring I had enough yardage and could even add some borders to get the dimensions I wanted. On this copy I wrote final design and filed the others away to avoid further confusion.

Then on my final design sheet I broke my quilt down into the two blocks and figured the sizes and number of squares needed for each and wrote them down like a key or a legend on a map.

Now that all of those steps are done I am ready to start cutting and I don't have to worry if I have enough fabric because I've done all my homework and I know that I do.

How do you plan your quilts?
Do you still use a paper method or do you have software?

Thanks for reading♥