When enthusiasm almost gets me in trouble on Design Wall Monday

Okay, getting more than half of the blocks sewn for this quilt got me all excited about seeing what it would look like with the sashing. A trip last week to Fabric Shack resulted in finding a dynamite clear blue Moda Marbles fabric with a golden yellow Moda Marbles for the accent. Exactly the shades I visualized. Here is part of the design.

This is an offset arrangement I first saw on Dana's blog Old Red Barn Co. Click here to see her wonderful quilt. Now mine is a bit bigger, but then you know I am genetically unable to make small quilts - really, its true - LOL!

So on Sunday I decided to start cutting fabric for the sashing - slice, dice, stitch, iron, slap it up on the design wall. Oooohhhhhh.......wait, I want unpieced straight of grain strips between the rows! Did I already whack too much off that 3 yard piece of blue? I hurriedly checked my math (and you know the issues I have with math) and I determined that I will have about 1" of extra length for the strips. At least I think that's correct. I did get the same answer two out of three times. So my enthusiasm had me dashing head long into this and some deeper thinking was probably advisable, but its too late for that now. I'll just roll with it -- and I did leave some of that blue on the bolt at Fabric Shack. That's my fall back position- gotta have a fallback position.

Here are two of my favorites of the last batch I sewed. I really like that cheddar print- you can sorta see the purple bird in it.

And that hot pink that looks like amoebas or paramecium (I never did get those straight) makes me happy with the chartreuse/turquoise polka dot.

So, I have a question... are you a neat quilter or a messy one? I don't suppose it will come as too big a surprise that I'm in the messy category. Years ago I worked with a guy who was brilliant but his office always looked like a tornado had just gone through it. Paper was piled everywhere, books precariously perched on the edge of the desk, half drunk cups of cold coffee held down other stacks and front and center on his desk was a little plaque that said "Chaos is a sign of genius". By that measure, I'm another Einstein - LOL! Right now this is how the floor of my sewing studio looks....

aren't the colors pretty?? I need to fold this fabric, but I want to whack off a couple of strips from each piece for another Kaffe quilt I'm planning, and I haven't found the time to do that. So it remains a heap that I step over and around. Oh well, its hard to find time to be neat when you are dealing with creativity - that's my story and I'm sticking to it!

Happy stitching-
carol fun