Advent friends "Scrappy Trips"

The scrappy trips blocks have become quilts and been  given to our Advent Friends.  They were well received!
If you look carefully you will notice that I had to trim blocks down.  One of the hazards of swaps and lottos is that with so many different makers , not all the blocks are always the same size.  If the sizes are close enough I can fudge them together with slightly narrower of larger seam allowances, but if there is a 1/2"  difference that would leave no seam allowances at all, which was the case with one of two of these blocks.  So I decided to trim all of the blocks down to the smallest size and to use sashing strips so I wouldn't be bothered by the seams not lining up.  I added the black cornerstones to continue the diagonal dark line formed by the blocks.

The Smaller quilt is for a 5 year old girl.  I chose the blocks with the brighter colors and novelty fabrics and used bright red paisley for the sashing and binding.  The border fabric is butterflies on a bright blue background and all of  the butterflies are edged in red.

 I quilted both quilts with the same all-over edge-to-edge design, which I am calling Tumbling hearts. On this one I used Cream colored thread.

 The larger quilt is for the mom of the family.  It has the remaining lotto blocks.  On of the blocks failed to mead fabric selection guidelines but I liked it anyway  and it helped me decide sashing color. Blocks were not supposed to be monochromatic in addition to the dark/black diagonal fabric.  But one block that came is done with all blue fabrics.  It is a beautiful block but does stand out somewhat due to its lack of other colors.  We (Denny usually collaborates with me on block placement) decided to make sure all the blocks adjoining the blue block had blue in them to  kind of bleed the color out across the quilt top.  Actually there were only a few blocks that did not contain some blue! I chose a teal blue floral print for the sashings and binding.  There was enough of the large floral I used for the border to make a back for the quilt as well.

   Again the tumbling hearts quilting ,  but on this one I used a color of thread called "Blue Moon."                                                                  




Scrappy Trips Around The World is a great way to use up 2.5"strips longer than 16 inches.   The  pattern for Scrappy Trips Blocks  a'la Bonnie K. Hunter, can be found at http://quiltville.blogspot.com/2005/06/scrappy-trips-around-world.html