Scrappy Trip Along

Hello!

 I have spent a lot of time recently looking at pretty quilts on Pinterest and the Internet, and time and time again the instructions would call for a rotary cutter, quilters ruler, and cutting mat. So, ignoring the fact that my hexagon quilt is nowhere near finished, it only made sense to invest in some for myself!

 

I have always seen Jelly Rolls in sewing shops and always thought 'that seems like a stupid idea'. How wrong I was. Pretty pretty amazing things can be made from them! And when I kept seeing pictures of beautiful geometric shaped quilts on Instagram that were tagged with 'scrappy trip along'... I did some more investigating. This tutorial was so interesting, and made the ridiculously hard looking pattern into something easy... and I even thought I could do it! Oh dear...

Now you may remember when I made my patchwork cushion that I admitted to being terrified of my sewing machine. WELL after a day of cutting out random strips of fabric yesterday, I decided to break out the sewing machine this morning. AND I remembered how to thread the bobbin and the top thread (correct terminology??). 

That's where the successes stopped. 

It has been so long since I  used my sewing machine that I forgot its pretty design on the front! I want to let you know that I didn't really have a clue what I was doing. I was just practising to see what would happen! 

In the pic above, you'll see that I started off my sewing six 2.5" x 16" strips together lengthways. Once that's all done, sew them into a tube lengthways, square off the end and cut this tube into 2.5" smaller tubes that look like this.... 

Then you just need to be an ultra cool whizz with a seam ripper. 

By opening the tubes at different points, you'll end up with....

 

 Yup, at this point i was feeling pretty proud of myself. Then all you need to do is sew the rows together to make a big square. This is where I hit problems. So I understand what an inch is. And with the aid of my patchwork ruler, I could now probably guess about how much 2.5" is. But what the hell is 3/8"?! I know I need a 1/4" seam, and the guide on my sewing machine COULD have helped me out with that, but no. I get a 3/8 mark and on the same line lower down something that says 1/4. You confuse me sewing machine. 

Anyway, I ignored this and carried on regardless... guessing at 1/4". Not a good plan. Sewing the rows together started out okay...

Ahhh lovely, see how the squares all match up on the right? I think that's where they stopped matching up.

This is what the end product was...

Even I can tell that's not right. 

But it hasn't put me off. I have ordered a 1/4" quilting foot, which, I am told, should help out with those pesky seams and 3/8" craziness. 

And just because this isn't perfect, I am still going to keep it, and possibly find a use for it somewhere. It's all a valuable lesson, and one day I will look back on it and laugh. Laugh in the face of sewing machines everywhere! 

If you want to see what a Scrappy Trip Around The World SHOULD look like then look at Katy's blog I'm a Ginger Monkey, go onto the Flickr group for Scrappy Trip Along  or look here.

Or just search it in Google, or Instgram. The serious, and talented quilters are all going a bit crazy for it, and I can see why. 

Until next week, sewing machine. 

 x x x