Scrappy Trip Along...in Progress!

This is a quilt project that I started a week ago. I had been noticing a lot of similar photos on my Instagram feed, all tagged with #scrappytripalong. All those beautiful quilts made me very curious and so I asked questions about it. 

I found out this quilt pattern is a fantastic way to use up scraps. I decided I would give it a try, maybe making placemats or something small. I searched through my fabric stash. 

My stash is mostly scraps but I was happy to discover that my pieces were large enough to use. 

The quilt starts with cutting many 2.5 x 16 inches strips. I used this guideline to find out how many strips I needed. I am planning on making a lap quilt. According to that guideline, I need 180 strips. I haven't finished the project, so I'm not sure how accurate the calculations are yet. 

Here is the tutorial I am following for the quilt: scrappy trip around the world. 

If you are on Instagram, there are currently over 4,000 photos with the hastag #scrappytripalong. It's fun to see everyone's projects, check it out! 

Adding social media to a quilt project is a lot of fun and encouraging. Seeing everyone's progress and finished quilts is definitely inspiring. 

My Instagram photos 

If you are not on Instagram, there is also a Flickr group: scrappy trip along.

I am not finished with this project, but it's fun to lay out the squares on the floor and see the progress already. 

When I started cutting my fabrics, I decided I wanted to have a black strip repeating through each block. I always put my strips in the same sequence after doing the seam ripping, and just flip around the blocks to create the design. All the blocks still need to be trimmed and once I have all of them, I will decide on the final placement. 

One very special part of this quilt for me, besides using fabrics that were in other projects, is that my husband and my three kids each chose fabrics to go into blocks. Their own colour choices went in several blocks that I have already made. As soon as I laid down these blocks, Celeste looked for her blocks!

This is the first quilting project I have worked on since we moved to the island  eight months ago. It feels so nice to quilt again. This project prompted a visit to the local quilt shops, which I hadn't visited yet. There are only two in town, one I didn't like too much, but the other I really liked. I also found out about the local quilt guild and I am planning on attending the meeting in February. I love the snowball effect this project has had so far! 

As a homeschool mom, time isn't always available to work on big projects like this, but there is no rush to complete this one. I have taken the time over the years to "steal" moments to do projects just for me. It is important and Lori (from Project-Based Homeschooling) explains this so much better than me. I highly recommend her new Monday series of blog posts: PBH for grown-ups.