How do I design a quilt? A very common question

As promised, another post although a bit later than I hoped- we have had an awsome heatwave that has knocked the wind out of my sales. But not to winge, I thought that this post I would talk about a question that a lot of new customers and quliting newbies ask me.
How do I go about designing a quilt or project?
I thought that my current mega project would be a good example to  use.
I know that a lot of people have a grand design that they work out on paper first but for me it is a more organic experience. I do all of my patchwork by hand while I relax in front of the TV.
Firstly I had some left over pack of 2.5" squares that I really liked and some great new white on white fabrics and just started making my little triangle blocks with 2 2.5" squares and sewing 2 paralell diagonal lines just off centre and then cutting down between the lines to make one square made of 2 triangles. I use coloured and white and cut the white by eye as I am a huge fan of liberated quilting.
They looked great, so I spent a few nights making those while I was watching TV and relaxing, until I had a big pile.
Then I thought- hmm what if I was to do the same thing but across the square- so I did this and made rectangel ones that were cute too- another couple of nights and I had a pile of those too!
I ironed them all and then played with the different shaped blocks that I could make with them. I made lots of windmills which made me think of how much I loved those kids coloured foil windmils that you blow on when I was a kid. So I spend some time sewin together groovy windmill blocks. and then wondered what to do with the rectangle so basically did the same thing with them and this gave me a sort of plus sign(probably has a quilting name but I don't know it)
I also made some other groovy shapes and then wondered how to put them together, so I kind of layed them all out on the floor and tried some different fabric strips between 4 blocks and then chose the 2 fabrics that I like best and started sewing them together.
That took a while!
I layed them all out on the floor again and thought now it looks like someone has put a whole heap of windmills in the ground, so I thought "Windmills in the garden" it needs some flowers and so the name came about and by adding some 10" funky floral blocks I got my base quilt.

So now I thought that some cute bird and butterfly applique would be a good addition and I am in the process of adding them to the plain blocks. Once that is done I will add sashing between the blocks in a dark colour and then see how it looks.
I will keep you posted on the progress, but I hope that this rambling will help some of our new quilters understand that a quilt doesn't need to be a major production, it can be easy fun and organic in it's design.
Sew until next time! Have fun quilting and don't let it be a drag!