January Jewels Revisited

The other day, a reader commented on my January Jewels post, asking about how I designed the quilt. Since she was a no-reply blogger, I couldn't answer her directly. Instead, I will share my process with all of you and hope she is still reading. 

Judi wrote: “Hi Rachel, I'm just admiring your trip around the world quilt! How did you offset it like that? Is it all in the way you position your blocks? What size strips did you use? Love the modern look on this. Beautiful!”

As previously mentioned, to make this baby quilt I used the tutorial from Quiltville and the size guide from Just a Bit Frayed. In short, I made nine blocks, consisting of six 2.5” by 16” strips. Most of the Scrappy Trip Along quilts I have seen are scrappy indeed and part of their charm lies in the serendipity of their fabric combinations. 

For this quilt, I wanted a more cohesive look. I made sure that each block contained one strip of dark blue, and that it was always the diagonal center of the block. (At least one block had to be unpicked and resewn at one point.)

After the blocks were pieced, I thought about placement. I wanted to arrange the blocks so that the blue lines formed a diamond. After sketching it out, it was clear that I only had enough blocks for an offset diamond, so that’s what I did.

Hope you have found this helpful! Thank you all for the lovely comments.

January Jewels Baby Quilt

Last weekend I went on my first quilting retreat, and it was amazingly productive. Having cut the fabric beforehand, I managed to completely piece, quilt and bind this baby quilt during the retreat!

The seeds of this quilt were planted last January when the Scrappy Trip Along trend took Instagram and the quilty blogosphere by storm. It’s no wonder this technique has been so popular. It’s simple, quick, fun and lends itself to using up scraps. The original tutorial can be found on the Quiltville blog, and a handy size guide at Just a Bit Frayed.

While I love scrappy quilts in theory, in practice I like my creations to be more cohesive. Instead of using all scraps, I started with fat quarters from Jeni Baker’s Color Me Retro fabric line and threw in some Lizzy House Pearl Bracelets and miscellaneous coordinating scraps, while sticking to a color theme of aqua, blue, lime green, purple and white. Each block is bisected by a dark blue fabric, which further unifies the blocks. The backing is more Pearl Bracelet and the binding is an anonymous solid.

After spending a year admiring other bloggers’ Scrappy Trip Along quilts, it was very satisfying to make one of my one. It was also extremely gratifying to finish a quilt in a weekend, something I had never done before. (My previous record was sixteen days.) The only problem is, I like this quilt so well that I want to make a larger one to keep for myself! Next time I have a stack of fat quarters in need of a pattern, I just might try this pattern again.