Quilt # 4 and the journey

So do you design a quilt in your head, and know that it will be perfect?  I do, I can see a quilt in my mind and 99% of the time the finished project is very close to what I planned in my head.  Now I usually also commit it to EQ just so I can remember what it was that I designed......the old memory isn't what it use to be.

But then there is that 1 % when nothing goes the way you had planned.......and thus the journey.  That is this quilt.  I had a quilt envisioned using my small scraps 5 x 2.5 bricks of any scrap that I could cut it from.......have I told you guys that I have 4 drawer of fabric left over from other quilts?  No yardage just scrap pieces. And 2.5X 2.5 white squares.  I set out cutting fabric 450 of each..... and then I sewed the two units together, and pressed each of the units.  SILLY ME WHY DIDN'T I LAY THEM OUT AT AROUND 25 UNITS?  When I finally did lay them out this is what I got;

And I hated it, I knew that I wouldn't finish it, so I altered my design.  I decided to sew 3 rows together and then sash with white to tone it down some.  So I set out to sash my blocks....got 72 of the new units  sashed..... learned nothing from my previous encounter with this quilt ........and this is what I discovered when I started laying this quilt out:

DRAT how did I manage to sash them all on the right and top, instead of the left and bottom.  Now what am I going to do?  Sure not going to rip out all of the seams.  So I turned the block and got this.

In my mind I decided that I could work with this.  I would just have sashing on the top instead of on the bottom of the block.  As long as I remembered to that the top row couldn't have sashing on the top I would be fine.  I actually had to start with the bottom row and work my way up.  Then I started obsessing about not having blocks with the same colors in them next to each other. 

Yesterday I threw my hands in the air and said" what it is, is what it is" and threw caution to the wind and just started piecing those blocks and rows together.  And here is the completed top.

I'm calling the quilt "barcode" it reminds me of my postal days verifying bulk mailings for automation rates.  These barcodes would never have passed muster, but for this quilt I think they will do okay.

I have no idea how Bonnie Hunter does this, and does it so well!

I hope to get the quilt loaded on the longarm tomorrow, and quilt it on Thursday.

Hope to see some of you on Saturday. 

Until my next post.......