I have an amusing story that is basically about the opposite - missing the obvious. At one time, I spent a large amount of time hunting for a quilting design to fit nicely into a border. I finally found a design I liked in a book at the library, that looked pretty much like this:
[ATTACH=CONFIG]618921[/ATTACH]
I modified it to be double lines to look this:
[ATTACH=CONFIG]618922[/ATTACH]
After I was done marking and quilting it, I realized that my bathroom has tiles with this exact pattern in it, in a stripe at about 4" high at about 4' off the floor. Talk about missing what was right in front of my face, every day! Had I noticed the design sooner, I could have saved myself a lot of time hunting. Since then, I have enjoyed spotting attractive quilting designs in tile work and iron work.