Quilty sewing

When I was getting ready for our Scrub Stitching retreat back in April I prepped a Scrappy Trip Around the World quilt.

Lots of strips cut (2½" x 16") and sorted into piles and bagged ready to sew —

Here was my progress when Scrub Stitching ended — 

Lately I've been regularly attending the Thursday Stitching days at The Country Yard. I always used to go along but, with family demands and such like, Thursdays had not worked for me for the last few years.

Now I drop Odie off at school on a Thursday morning and carry on to sewing at the shop.

Most weeks I've done the odd block of my Scrappy Trips - depending on what else I was working on. It's been a brilliant pick up and put down project - with the strips already cut and sorted - I've been amazed at how much I've managed to get done!

I planned it with a dark set of squares running through the centre of the block. The block below didn't show up very well in photos as that blue next to the black was too similar (you can see it with some others in the photo above) —

A bit of unpicking and re-sewing improved it a lot. 

Other than this I kept it totally scrappy, and largely unplanned.

At the end of October I had Thursday sewing one day, worked at the shop on Friday and then was back for our once a month Saturday sewing. My machine had a sleepover for two nights so when I rocked up on Saturday it was ready to sew.

And guess what, I finished all the blocks! I laid them all out in the upstairs part of the shop, out of everyone's way and got a good number of steps in going up and down to sew it together!

Done —

After a good press I hung it up properly for a photo shoot —

And made a backing (in my mind, scrappy quilts have scrappy backings - that's 16 less FQs in my stash!)

I was initially inspired by *this quilt* by quiltylove which led me to Bonnie Hunter's *tutorial*.

McGoergeous approves :-)

Back in August I joined in with Lindlee of Plains and Pine when she ran '5 stars 5 ways', showcasing different ways to make the LeMoyne Star. (I can't find the tutorials now so I think it was a strictly limited sewalong.)

I made the 5 stars in 5 ways, vowing to get back to them at some stage so that I would have enough to make a quilt.

Recently I came across a tutorial by Lisa of Shadow Valley Quilts for another method.  A good excuse to pull out the LeMoyne Star box again.

This block went together really well!

I liked my fabric decisions which gave the star a different look to my others (where I was looking at technique more than creativity). But seeing them all laid out, I now have a grand plan of a 3x3 setting, with 3 more like this most recent one (colour-wise) for the four corners. I'll put the 'round one' in the centre. My least favourite - or rather, the most wonky - block will have to go on the back.

But I have plenty of other things that are more urgent so this will probably go back in its box for now! (Unless it becomes a Thursday sewing project?)

Must be off, calves to feed (still!)

'til next time,

happy stitches,

Raewyn