Let's take a scrappy trip, shall we?

 

 Hello peeps,

My Grandmother's quilt should not have been my first.  I had actually started another quilt before I made hers - this one I am going to show you now.  Back in late December of last year, I noticed on Instagram that a quilt-along was happening, called the Scrappy Trip Along. The blocks for the quilt looked so interesting, I was fascinated how they were made and I so desperately wanted to make a quilt of my own. I knew that I would soon be trying one of these blocks.  Of course, I loved making my first blocks, but I was not happy with using random fabrics.  Maybe the control freak in me did not like the randomness. I wanted more control.  I chose to have each block as a colour theme.  Six different fabrics of the same colour together in each block, kind of like a rainbow.  I do like rainbows!

By the end of January, I had 24 finished blocks.  All fabrics used had come from my stash. I was in love.  To be honest though, I had no idea where I was heading with this quilt.  I laid out all my blocks together, seen in the photo below, and I knew it needed to be bigger, a few more yellow and orange blocks too.

I took a break from my Rainbow quilt to make Grandma's.  I was itching to add more blocks, but I had the deadline of Grandmas 90th birthday party.  I had to finish that quilt before her party.

Finally by the end of May, I had 30 completed blocks.  As I was laying them out with much excitement, I believed I had finished all my blocks.  Once they were all together though, I knew immediately I had to make 5 more.  If this quilt was to be the one we snuggled under on our couch, it had to be longer.

So 5 more blocks were made.  I have yet to take a photo of all completed 35 blocks, it is getting more and more difficult to photograph as this quilt is so large and our living area very small.

If you want to make your own scrappy trip quilt, all the instructions are here.  It really is easy to do, the blocks come together quickly once you have all your fabric strips cut.  I used this photo as a reference guide how to iron my blocks before cutting (the photo in the instructions is not clear to me)

I have created a board on Pinterest with all this info together, you can see that here.  There is also a Flickr group with so many photos of gorgeous scrappy trip along blocks and completed quilts. Go check it out of you want some inspiration.

I am so eager to finish this quilt, but a secret project has been taking up my time, I'll share that as soon as I can.

Do you want to make a scrappy trip along quilt, or have you already made one?

Happy Creative Space day to you.

Cat xox

Scrappy fun.

So, what do you do with your fabric scraps? Your ribbon scraps, pieces of pretty wrapping paper after a present has been unwrapped? I had been collecting all of these in a plastic box for Abbey. Once Zoe was born, this box was overflowing (all the ribbon and wrapping paper from gifts for newborn Zoe filled it up very quickly)

I don't like throwing out perfectly lovely fabric, ribbons or paper, so I needed to find some ways to give away my overflow. I gave some to friends, with a glue stick, for their children to have as an arts and crafts activity.

For the last 3 and a half years, every Friday during school term, I have taken Abbey to one of our local libraries for Story time (and now Zoe comes, too) Our librarian (and her helpers) are fantastic. There is usually a theme each week, and our librarian reads books, finds songs to sing and dance to, plays silly games and at the end there is always an arts and craft activity relating to the days theme. This part Abbey loves. It can be cut and paste, colouring in, making little people out of pipe cleaners to sit on paper surf boards or spiders in a web for Halloween.

It is always lots of fun and I am sure I enjoy it as much as Abbey. I have given our librarian two large snap lock bags, mainly of fabric off-cuts. I have started another large bag to give to Abbey's kinder.

These are some fabric covered people Abbey made recently. The two on the blue paper she did at the library, and the other ones she made at home.

We will definitely be taking this scrap box to Hong Kong when we move over permanently. Abbey so often uses it for crafting and creating, and I am sure Zoe will too, when she is a little older.

As I said in yesterdays frog head tea post, the girls and I are in Hong Kong at the moment for the school holidays. We are a family again. We hope to do some more exploring, find the local library and find some more playgrounds close to our apartment. The last two days have been wonderful, crossing the road from our apartment and going to the outdoor pools, of which we can see from our apartment windows. It feels like we are living in a resort. The warm sunny weather is so lovely and making up for the very cold January we spent in Hong Kong earlier in the year.

Cheerio for now, Cat.