#scrappytripalong

Desperate times call for desperate measures. And there was no guarantee that the sun predicted for my work day would last till my day off or even that evening. So I took my camera and my finished Scrappy Trip quilt to work, and on my lunch break, took a saunter around the building.

The #scrappytripalong on Instagram is totally responsible for me making this quilt in the first place. I had already had in my mind that I'd like to lower the level of my scrap bin this year, so when I saw these scrappy trips start popping up, I jumped right on the wagon and made my first block January 1.

 

I love quilt patterns where every block is like a new discovery - and as more and more blocks were added, it just kept getting better and better. The tutorial for the block is here, and seriously, this block is fun, easy, and dare I even say relatively quick.

After the first couple of blocks were pulled pretty randomly from my scrap basket, I started getting comments on folks liking the palette, so I went with it. The one constant was a gray print down the center of every block, which later influenced the gray metro circle backing and the scrappy gray binding.

When it came time to quilt, I really wanted to try something new-to-me, and settled on the orange peel. See this post by The Girl Who Quilts for some good pics and tips. I used white Aurifil 40wt 50wt thread, my go-to for piecing and quilting both. Now here's where this quilt took an odd little side-trip. I started the orange peel with my free-motion foot, and had serious trouble keeping control. So considering the curves were quite large (6"), I switched to my walking foot, but that really did not work for me either. SO {lightbulb!} I put my fm foot back on, and roughly marked a row's worth of curves with my hera marker. Bingo. That was just the bit of guidance I needed to stay on track. After a few rows of doing that, I was able to stitch the peels without any markings. Progress for sure. Shortly into quilting this one I decided it was fine to have it be a learning piece, so you'll see some peels that are near-perfect, and others that are decidedly not. But it's a journey, and I feel great about taking another step on mine.

Linking up with Fabric Tuesday. This quilt was on my FAL Q1 list!