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.