Scrappy Trip Around the World

I fell in love with this block when I saw it on the Joe Tulips' blog last week (the link is here) and decided to try to make a few of my own. I'd already cut a bunch of 2.5 inch strips for another project I was working on, so it was easy to get started. It's really fun to put different fabric combinations together, slice them up, and see how the pattern develops....I'm hooked. I think I'll keep going until I have enough for a queen-sized quilt for my guest bed. It's a great stash-buster and it doesn't get boring.

36-patch blocks

I've just begun another project using an idea I got from a blog called Crazy Mom Quilts written by a quilter named AmandaJean. I love her ideas and patterns---they're usually simple, but they are clean and beautiful too.

Anyway, the idea here is to make 12-inch blocks, each out of two fabrics that are of different values. She suggested going through your stash to find fabrics that had small prints on them, and then dividing them into piles of darks, mediums and lights before selecting pairs that you thought would work well together.

I jumped at the idea because I'd recently been going through my stash for another project, and had found a number of great fabrics in there that I hadn't looked at for months or years. As I'd come upon a piece I loved I'd wonder why I hadn't make anything from it yet, and feel sorta bad that it was just sitting in a cabinet for so long. Once you've collected a lot of fabric, it really IShad to figure out how to use it and it's easy to neglect pieces that you really love, or that you purchased at a terrific little shop you found on a vacation or were given as a gift.

So this project seems to me like the perfect one for getting some of those treasures to into the light of day. And it's a project without any deadline, which makes it pretty appealing too. AmadaJean encouraged the quilters who follow her blog to try to finish a specific number of blocks a week---lets say 2 or 3 or 4---since this type of project is so easy to pick up and put away. I'm on a roll, having made 6 blocks already, but even if I run out of steam I can pick this up anytime.

I am trying to use a little green in each block so they will tie together when I've finished, at least enough to make a quilt out of them that hangs together. I imagine I'll make a queen-sized quilt, so I can use it on my bed so I'll have a chance to admire the fabrics I've loved for so long now that they're "out!"