Diving Into My Scrappy Trip

It poured here all evening so that gave me more time to get a start on my new quilting project. The dogs are not happy that we didn’t get our regular walk tonight. Luckily, we did get a two mile walk in this afternoon. But that’s not enough for any of us. We have a week or so of cloudy but dry weather coming up.

After dinner I gave the dogs chewies to keep them occupied and hunkered down in my sewing room. I finished the first three blocks for this quilt.

I wanted to finish four blocks, but I was tired and made mistakes that I had to pick out on the third block. So I decided it was time to wind down with a little TV instead.

I have to say… I’m really happy with where this is going. I always have some difficulty in picturing what a quilt is going to look like once I’ve selected my fabrics. I was thinking these blocks were going to read darker. And I’m really happy with the red as the diagonal center in each block. I think I’ll see some interesting color blocks appear once I get more blocks done and up on the design wall.

I made four full strip sets tonight. That’s the most time consuming part of making these blocks. I really like to be careful and make sure my seams are accurate and that I press them nice and straight. That means that my blocks will go together nice and easy.

Here’s the first strip set on my ironing board. Holy cow! Look at all that gorgeousness!

See that big old metal ruler on my ironing board? I use that to make sure my strip sets are straight as I press them. Using a ruler has really helped make my strip sets more accurate and much nicer to work with.

I actually sewed the first block together wrong… and that was after taking a photo of it laid out and admiring it for a while. Why didn’t I see it at this point?

The good thing about making a mistake early on is that it was a great learning experience and now I have a really good system for deciding which seam to pick out in each section.

And speaking of unpicking… I read something recently that said that seam rippers do wear out. They get dull after use and you need to replace them. The seam ripper I’ve been using is a green plastic one that I got after I graduated from college in 1983. I started using it tonight and it was pulling the thread rather than cutting it. So I grabbed a new one that my brother gave me several years ago. It’s a beautiful one a friend of his made out of Myrtle wood. It has a seam ripper on one end and a stiletto on the other end. Instead of a cap, you just pull out the sharp end, turn it around and push it into the handle part.

The sharp ripper really made a big difference! So I can confidently recommend that you occasionally purchase a new seam ripper!

I’ve already selected all the strips for the sets that I need to make. So now I just need to grab a set of six strips and start sewing.

I’ve cut and selected enough strips to make about 46 blocks. That way I’ll have a few extra in case I end up with some that I don’t like.

These blocks will finish at 12 inches square. I’m planning on making this quilt 6 blocks by 7 blocks, which means I’ll need 42 blocks. It will end up about 72 x 84 inches. That’s a nice throw size quilt.

I think this quilt will be a lot of fun to make because each block will be unique. That will keep it interesting.

I will have about 12 inches or so left over in each strip set — not enough to make another block. So I’ll have to come up with a project to use that all up.