I think I’ve mentioned before that it’s neat to have a portable quilting project – one you can just grab and go on your way out the door to appointments or other destinations that require lots of waiting.

The big problem I’ve found with this is that you don’t always have something ready to grab when you’re ready to go.

It seems like after I finish one block, I spend way too much time trying to decide which one to tackle next. With 225 unique blocks in this quilt, there’s a dizzying array of choices available.

Apparently many quilters who are working on this quilt just pull a block number out of a bowl to decide which block to do next, but that’s not my style; it’s too random.

I needed a good way to sort through and organize the blocks available, and like all good librarians, I went for a solution involving index cards.

After a trip to the office supply store (it doesn’t take much of an excuse to get me there, really), I spent a couple of evenings in front of the TV, cutting out little pictures of each block and pasting them to index cards.

Next to the picture on each card, I put the block number, and in the corner I indicated whether it was a beginner, intermediate, or advanced block.

Now I was ready to sort. First, I pulled out all the cards for blocks I’d already completed, and rubber-banded them together (yes, I also bought rubber bands at the office supply store; you’ve got to have the right tools for the job).

Then I pulled out all the triangle and corner blocks, because I wasn’t ready to tackle them yet. Continuing along those same lines, I also pulled out all the advanced difficulty level blocks for later (much later).

This still left me with about 125 possible blocks, which, let’s face it, is not much less daunting than 225 blocks.

The good news was that now they were on index cards, so they were much easier to spread out on the floor, move around, and group by color, fabric, block style, difficulty … anything that struck my fancy.

At one point I believe I even had a stack of cards tentatively named “Weird Shapes” that I thought might make for an interesting blog entry.

I ended up narrowing it down to about 50 blocks that I was prepared to tackle sooner than later.

Thinking ahead, I’d pasted the block pictures onto the unlined side of the index cards, so I could use the lined side to jot down blog ideas for that block. Everything from which other blocks I might put in the same article (e.g. “The Lattice Series: with E9, L4, J2”), to what the block looks like (e.g. “asymmetrical melons; looks like superhero mask”), to construction techniques (e.g. “how to handle bulk in appliquéd pea pods?”), to fabric choices (e.g. “striped fabric adds extra level of challenge”).

See how I cleverly gave you a preview of the exciting posts to come? I bet you can’t wait. Fortunately for you, I now have no excuse to hem and haw for days about what I’m doing next. As soon as I finish a block, I’ll be ready to go on the next one.