Make Visual Decisions Visually: Serendipity Puzzle

That is a quote (without the Serendipity Puzzle part) from Lorraine Torrence. It is a great ‘rule’ to remember, at least for me. I find that the picture in my mind’s eye often looks better in my mind’s eye.

To that end, I cut some sashing pieces to try and figure out if I was on the right track.


This example was my original idea for the sashing. I am not fond of it, but it is also not terrible. It looks busy and is not restful. Not sure if this quilt can be considered restful in general, but I certainly don’t want to add to the excitement. I may have to sew some pieces together to make sure this is not the right sashing design before I decide.


To me, this screams “look at the cross.” I think the contrast between the light background and dark sashing does not add to the overall design.


Think, so far, this is the best, which surprised me. It gives some space to each block so you can see the design and alleviates some of the busy-ness. I would put pieces of the three different lights instead of just the blue on white.

Author: Jaye

Quiltmaker who enjoys writing and frozen chocolate covered bananas.

3 thoughts on “Make Visual Decisions Visually: Serendipity Puzzle”

  1. You’ve probably made this quilt long ago, but here’s some general advice:

    Don’t cut the fabric. Lay out as big a piece as you have of it flat on the table (or lay out several pieces next to each other), then place your blocks in checkerboard fashion spaced as far apart as you think your finished sashing strips should be. This is quick and economical, and also lets you trial different sashing widths as easily as moving blocks a little further apart or closer together.

    PS The contrast strip won’t look like a cross unless your quilt has only the four blocks. In a multi-block quilt, it will look like a grid. That can actually cool down the busyness of the blocks because your eye reads the grid and smooshes the multi-coloured block together as “colourful square” – which can be annoying if you wanted the piecing to shine, but the pieced pattern isn’t always the point…

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