I'm sort of lucky in some ways that I started before rotary cutters and the big boom of quilting in that I always had to draft out patterns and such. All I had available to me were books of black and white pictures of historic applique quilts (I admire handwork but I never wanted to do those) or block diagrams which usually didn't include setting (block to block? alternating squares? on-point?), and certainly no instructions of any sort.
I used to do a wide variety of crafts but gradually just quilt now and I got rid of my alternate craft supplies. I have started to knit again, still working on my first horrible project which is going to end up as a dog blanket, but I have to start somewhere.
But without my stash, I like to play with Electric Quilt, a quilting design computer program. Sometimes I can just do a project on that until the spark passes and I don't actually have to make it. I say my three favorite parts of quilting are Planing, Playing (with fabric), and Piecing. I actually do enjoy making block diagrams and things like that. My family has gotten used to living with batches of fabric "auditioning" in different corners of the house. And they have gotten used to me being in "quilt world" where I'm mentally reviewing potential projects and doing the math and exchanging the colors -- the nice thing is that I can do all of that on Electric Quilt and save the changes and progressions and even print them out!
It can be a big step for many who start with classes or kits to go on to design their own projects but it is it's own subset of fun and I like playing on the computer, it's pretty much the equivalent of doing quilt puzzles for my amusement
