My all-yellow Scrappy Trip Around the World quilt is coming along nicely! This has been my back-seat project for a while, the one that’s cut and ready to go, but waiting in a basket while I’m sewing other things (like curtains, or curtains, or maybe no-sew curtains). When I made the first #scrappytripalong quilt, I watched the Instagram feeds some other folks were sending out, and a few ladies had all-yellow blocks, which were so bright and sunny and citrusy and inviting. I had already been (lazily) talking about an all-yellow quilt for a couple of years, and the two just came together. BAM.
I’m at 19 blocks at this point. They just go together so quickly, which is awesome. When I was making the first version, I considered stopping at a lap-sized quilt, but then I accidentally made a bunch more blocks and figured, “We’re going for a twin!” Since then, I’ve been watching how we use our quilts a lot more closely. A bunch of my earlier quilts were 60″ x 60″, which is an easy size to get to fairly quickly, and seems like it’s plenty big enough. And it is–for the sofa. But now that I have two children in twin beds (soon to be three), I find that I want to have actual BED quilts more, and the lap size just isn’t enough to really cover a twin mattress and look quite right. I want some hanging-over-the-edge-ness to give the quilt a little presence in the room. If I’m going to invest all this time and money and effort into making beautiful quilts, then I want them to be used, and a twin seems more likely to be put on a bed and given life by my children and, God willing, their children.
I put together some quick Scrappy Trip Around the World math to supplement the original tutorial, for your reference (and mine). You can also download this chart as a PDF and print it at home to save for later! I realize that the intent here is to use up your scraps, but I’ve included a conversion at the bottom of the chart for using fat quarters–a lot of us have (ahem) hoards of FQs to burn, and a quilt like this is such a great place to use them; plus, since so many quilters now think in FQs, it seemed like a good ballpark way to help estimate how much fabric this quilt will require. Also: seeing the stark numbers made me understand the popularity of the baby quilt! So quick, so tiny!
I am taking my time and not rushing this quilt, but I do admin that I am really hoping I can get it pieced and quilted before the summer is over–the yellows will be dreamy out on the back patio, across from the yellow chairs we have out there. I love it when a plan comes together.
Just 23 blocks left to go! I did a batch of 11 last night, so here’s hoping I can crank out another 11 over the weekend and be well close to finished with this before we leave for the beach next week. I can almost smell the lemony goodness!
