Delectable Cakes and other temptations

I took a quilting class yesterday at the Joyful Quilter quilt shop in Scotia, NY. I was looking for some inspiration and a chance to immerse myself in fabric for awhile. One of my good quilting- and general-life buddies joined me.

We each started piecing Delectable Cakes quilts in shades of burgundy, pink, green and black in the five-hour class. My blocks are done; now I just have to decide on an arrangement. They are scrappy, and I am always torn between truly random and organized random placements of the blocks.

But even more challenging for me will be trying to come up with a quilting design that complements the pattern and that I can do a decent job with when I start quilting on it with Faith (my ABM Innova midarm quilter). I am sort of stuck in my pantograph rut. I can do pantos reasonably well without a lot of struggle, so I am always tempted to just take the easy way out.

In fact, I am wrestling with this very same dilemma for an April Easter Basket wall quilt I just finished piecing today. The pattern is one of 12 quilts in "Simply Charming Seasons" by Moose on the Porch Quilts. I started out thinking I would do a lot of cross hatching and custom quilting in the baskets, but then I made myself nervous just thinking about it. And I found a really nice panto in my collection that would look really good on it. So I don't know.

Maybe I will just go work on the Delectable Cake a little more, and try to avoid the temptation to load the April Easter Basket quilt on the frame just now. Maybe if I wait a little while, I will get the nerve up to do something a little more creative. I know the Innova is up to the challenge... The question is, am I?