I looked back over my posts and I can't seem to find a photo of my little applique top after I finished setting it together. I love the triple sashing and think I should use it more often. It looks special, and yet it's so easy to do, everything lines up nicely and it's not complicated to cut. The next time I get out my stacks of finished blocks and audition settings I'll have to remember this one.

My design walls have been empty for weeks, and it's starting to get to me. All my projects are at a plodding stage, and I'm itching to get far enough that I can throw some blocks up there and start getting them together. I probably need to pick one project and work intensively on that for a while so that I can see more progress, but I've really enjoyed the last few weeks of cutting and fiddling with scraps, even if I haven't  done as much sewing as I normally do. Go with the flow, but I think the direction might be about to change.

 I'm glad that I enjoy all the stages of quilting, I love the designing, the cutting, the sewing, the setting, even borders and binding. It would be no fun to dread one part of the process and keep putting it off. I suppose the worst part for me is the decision making, this setting or that, this border fabric or a pieced one, square or on point: I can get bogged down because I can see too many options, or I hate them all. If I followed other people's patterns it might be different, but unless I'm exactly copying an antique quilt I usually just make it up as I go. And I need time for that, to think about each stage and try out my ideas and work out the dead ends.

I think that's why I'm tempted when I see quilts I love, like Bonnie's Garden Party and Jo's Rail Fence. Someone has done all the thinking for me! I just have to get stuck into the scraps and start sewing. I'm fighting the impulse to dive into both those projects and finish them up in double quick time. They are meant to be leader-enders, and take a while to put together in between my own ideas, not gobbled up in no time flat. The sewing is so easy I just want to keep on going, but I need to resist the urge to work on them exclusively- if I finish them I'll have to choose yet another leader-ender.

So I'll keep plodding on the other projects, and cutting more scraps for both tops until the urge to get one of them together becomes irresistible and then I'll give in. By then I'll probably have found another pattern that insists on being made and that can become my next "This will be a great leader-ender!" project.