All-Yellow Scrappy Trips Around the World Quilt Finished!

All finished!  I have been steadily working my way through my pile of incomplete projects, and wanted to get both this and the triangle quilt all done–and here it is.  Jubilee!

This could very easily be my favorite quilt I have ever made.  Oh, alright, it IS my favorite quilt I’ve ever made–there, I said it.  How cheerful is this thing, right?!?  How could you ever feel anything but joyful when this quilt is around?

I dreamed this puppy up almost two years ago, then got busy working on it when the #scrappytripalong popped up on Instagram.  The fabrics are from my (alarmingly expansive) collection of yellow cottons, but also were donated by IG friends near and far–and I’m so honored and delighted that every time I see this quilt, I’ll be reminded of how amazing the online sewing community is.  Who sends fabric to a near-stranger so they can fulfill a wild-eyed idea for a bed covering?  Sewing folks do, that’s who.  YES!

I was pretty indiscriminate with the fabrics, and put anything next to anything as I was working.  I wanted it monochromatic, but scrappy, and I think the result is really amazing.

The quilting is the same as my other Scrappy Trips Around the World quilt, modeled on the design Rita used on hers: straight lines with the walking foot, through every other row of squares on the diagonal, repeated in the opposite direction to create a lattice.  Simple but really perfect for this quilt.

Part of what I like about this quilting design, rather than an all-over pattern, is that it really allows some movement to the finished quilt.  It washes up nice and crinkly, but not too stiff or solid.  I love how fluffy and drapey it is, and have already taken it outside more than once to read on the back patio as the days warm up.

The back, like most of my quilt backs, is pieced.  I used a giant chunk of Lizzy House’s Pearl Bracelet, with some contrast strips along the seamline.  Rather than more yellow, I opted for a turquoise bid print, to pick up on the bits of turquoise in some of the yellow scraps on the front of the quilt.  Ditto the orange, which picks up some of the warmer yellows from the quilt top.

You can really appreciate the lattice design of the quilting on the pearl bracelet, right?

The contrast strips on the quilt back are what must have inspired me to use turquoise for the binding–I don’t really know where that idea came from, but the minute it popped into my skull, I knew it was exactly the right choice.

I could have used another yellow for the binding, but I think that would have made the whole quilt wash out at the edges.  What I really like about the turquoise is that it frames out the quilt and makes the yellow the star by putting it at the center of attention.  Same thing with the black-and-white dots on my other scrappy trips quilt.  Sigh–isn’t it just dreamy?  Love, love, love.

Like with all my quilts, the binding is sewn on by machine.  I know, I know: all you purists insist on finishing your binding by hand, and I get that.  But I am impatient and I have yet to truly see an advantage to hand-sewing binding–other than the chunky binding on the Animal Alphabet Quilt I made for our son, which was so wide that it really had to be hand-sewn to mask the stitching on the front of the quilt.  In this case, a super narrow stitch line through the binding front and back does the trick.

I have at least one more postage-stamp-style quilt going (still!), with all my FOR REAL scraps cut from my scrap basket.  It won’t be strip-pieced, like this one, and it will have a really different look, but knowing how amazing a monochromatic quilt can be makes me want to play with more variegated scrappy designs.

Hello, spring.  I can almost smell you.  And I am so, so ready.  Bring it.

Want to make your own?  Download and print out the cutting list and get going!  Spring is nearly here!