25 Trips

I finally finished my last four Scrappy Trips blocks today. This brings the total to 25 of the 12" square blocks, which will make a comfortable 60" square lap quilt.

I started these blocks on a snowy day in February 2013, after seeing them here and there around the blogosphere. 19 months ago! It was the great quilt at Nifty Quilts that started me thinking. Her quilt is 96" square, or 64 blocks. I feel like I have been sewing and sewing and sewing, and I am relieved that I only wanted 25!

Remember that pile of off cuts from last time? I used 6 of them for the 25th block of the quilt:

I've learned more about my preferences while making this quilt. Repetitive machine sewing like this is not my thing. I'd rather have more challenge, or at least more variety, as I go along.

And although I love scrappy quilts, I've realized that I don't much like actual scraps. All of the strips for this quilt were cut from yardage in my stash.

There's only one fussy cut square in the whole quilt:

I just had to tweak it a little to get that seated figure to fit in the square.

The layout is the whole raison d'être for this quilt. I'll show that next time, when the blocks are joined. When I had it up on my temporary "design wall," it was clear that I'd have to put it together very carefully, without rotating any of the blocks, or the pattern would be lost. So, I labelled each block in the upper left corner, so I'd know which way is up:

I noticed that not all the blocks were as square as they should be. Let's hope it goes together well!

Highlands Houses Finished

I've been debating whether I should put a question mark after "finished," but I think my little Highlands Houses quilt is done:

Highlands Houses, 19" x 19"

I started this quilt just under a year ago, when I rescued a plaid shirt that my Dad never wore from the donation pile:

It was one wrong turn after another with this quilt, and the challenges continued with the quilting! As a beginner free motion quilter, I decided to do a loose stipple with fine thread, and let the quilting fall into the background. My practice pieces looked reasonable, but it all went out the window once the real quilt was under the needle!

I learned that:

1. Shirting is stretchier than regular quilting cotton.
2. Paper pieced blocks are stretchier than traditionally pieced blocks, because the grains are not usually lined up.

So, there are a few bumps in the middle, and a few tucks under the binding, but at this point I'm going to call it a day and move on to the next project! 

The whole time I was quilting I had this song from Cathy Miller, The Singing Quilter, going through my head:

Three quilts done, a gazillion to go!

Wordless WIP Wednesday -- BFF 5.3

WIP Wednesday Link Up