Don't come around here no more OR Step One

I fell in like-a-lot with the July Block Lotto block as soon as I saw it.   I am a fan of off-kilter graphic designs & I knew right away it had real potential in combo with large scale novelties (I am on an eternal quest for not-so-obvious places to insert smaller pieces of a large scale print).  Yes, I know, not everyone looks at 10" 16-patches & says "needs something big & confusing, pattern-wise", but there you are.

First let me show you one of the sets I made.  Alice in Wonderland just as she meets the Cheshire Cat, right?  Hence the title of this post (you are actually most welcome to come around as often as you like, cyberly anyway).

& then on July 31st I learned I won! 48 of these puppies will be working their way to me (I kept none of the blocks I posted because I had made a few back-ups for a not-yet-determined project; I really enjoyed MAKING this block).  That same week another quilt-blogger of my digital acquaintance asked how it was that I never took the process pledge.  The answer is mostly I never thought of it.  Also my process is not exactly linear; very few things come to me even in a roundabout way.  Mostly I stare at blank walls until it just seems like it has always been that way. You read that right - I do not have a design wall.  & brace yourselves, quilters...I could have a design wall; I choose not to.  I have a hard enough time staying interested in a project that is draped across my sewing table & even then, once I am finished I am very likely to send it elsewhere, so sick am I of thinking about it.  If I actually had to look at the d*mn thing, on the wall I just might stop quilting all together.  Have I ever mentioned deadlines make me tense?  Well they do & a design wall is a giant looming deadline as far as I am concerned. 

So here it is:

Step One- try not to think too hard about the quilt design.  This is best accomplished by never looking at the potential components directly or as a whole.  I'm really not kidding.  Instead heap everything together, ideally on a surface not quite large enough so that it periodically falls over & everything gets reshuffled & jumbled.