Trip Around Tutorial

As promised here is the tutorial for the scrappy Trip Around the World.  A great way to use up scraps and diminish that stash.  I chose all fabrics that had that soft romantic feel to it in primarily greens, pinks, reds and blues.  I am calling it my romance and roses quilts.

Choose six fabrics and cut into 2 1/2 x 16 inch strips.  Lay them out in any order you wish to sew them  together
I chose to use all dark green fabrics on the outside to distinguish the pattern when you put the quilt together and I
also used a light fabric on the other side while randomly putting the others between.  Sew the strips together in the order you want them.

Here are the six strips sewn together and turned around so that you can see how  to press them.  Press every other seam going in the opposite direction so that your seams will butt up against each other when you sew them back together.

Fold your sewn strips right sides together and sew the dark and light strip lengthwise to form a tube.

Once you have sewn the tube lay it flat and square up the left side and then cut six 2 1/2 inch strips  from that.  They will still be in a tube.

Now you will unsew each 2 1/2 inch tube to get six strips again with your dark square starting at  the left side and going up to the right.  See picture below.  Start with your dark fabric to the top and unsew.  The next one you will unsew will be the one that was on top of the first row that will now go to the bottom of the second row so make sure it is to the top of your tube before you unsew.   Hope that is clear.

These are your six tubes unsewn and laid out ready to sew back together.  Once they are sewn your now have a block.  Keep making these blocks until you have the size of quilt you desire.

Here are eight of my blocks put together to form the trip around the world.  I think I will go with  6 blocks across and 8 down.  Who knows, it may grow bigger than that.  I have been having fun putting them together.  As you can see the dark green always on the left side of the strips gives a very distinct pattern for the trip around.  You can see it without doing that but I think this just adds a lot.  You could also choose one fabric to use in all of your blocks to get a great look as well.  For example, using black with all brights would be stunning.

Have fun busting your stash.  Please send pictures of your quilt when it is done.  We would all love to see them.

Dee