The Scrappy Trip along

By now I’m sure you’ve seen some evidence of the Scrappy trip around the world quilt frenzy that’s been happening around the interwebs.

Well, it was sometime in early January when I happened across the early quilts in the #scrappytripalong tag on Instagram and Flickr, when suddenly I HAD to try it.

“Just a few blocks” I said to myself. “I’ll use some of the fabric I bought in Seattle last summer”

Just something easy and fun to do just for me. I deserve some me sewing time!

Just four blocks oughta do… no need to go all out and really drink the koolaid, right?

Yeah, what if I recovered one of my rather drab old floor pillows?

Any excuse to do some free motion quilting on my new girl was reason enough for me!

Seeing the back of the pillow top just makes me want to do a whole cloth quilt so badly! It seriously pained me to hide this inside the pillow!

I left the red and yellow squares empty so they would poof out a bit.

And I have to say it felt so good cutting into some of my special fabric!

Ok, honestly? This was such a satisfying and fun project! Those blocks were like candy! They came together so quickly and in like two days I had a finished pillow..

“Well that was so much fun!” I said to like every person within hearing distance, and phone distance, and internet distance….

And it haunted me. All those strips and quick quick blocks…

…”and don’t I have a ton of fabric I’ve been dying to play with for ages now?”

And for the first time in my life, I started a happy quilt just for my family to cuddle up in and enjoy. Can you believe that every . single . quilt . I’ve made over the years have just been for show and not for actual use? How ridiculous!!

I was a woman possessed. I turned to my hubby on the second day and said “I will be unavailable as a wife, mother and general useful person around here for the next handful of days. There is food in the fridge.”

And by the end of that day I had blocks to show..

Lots of blocks!

THEY’RE LIKE CANDY I TELL YOU! Sweet, lovely, yummy highly addictive candy… (see how I used two kinds of blocks? One where the dark value was 3-3 and the other 2-4? Well I had a vague hopeful plan in mind)

by the third day I was playing with the layout…

And was so pleasantly surprised that my varied blocks created these perfect clean points in a neato, larger variation of the common Scrappy Trip Around the World quilt layout. By the end of Day 3 I had my top pieced!

Then spray and pin basted by day 4 ..

It came with me to the FVMQG-VMQG sew in..

And hung out with Paula’s Kaffe Fassett themed Scrappy Trip..

Where we held a lottery for all the scrappy trip around the world blocks that were made that day!

I highly recommend sew-ins! Especially where “travel handmade” is the swap theme..

I managed to make some progress on my Hexie lily pad quilt..

It was finally time to quilt this sucker up!

I backed it with the softest flannel I could find..

And after 6 days of sewing, quilting and binding, I had my new, cuddly couch quilt!

Seriously, you should try it.

Go on! Just one block can’t hurt, right?