The start of a New Year bought with it a renewed enthusiasm to finish off projects started in 2012. With plenty of quilts to finish, I wasn’t planning on starting a new one. Until I spotted the scrappy trip along post here

 http://www.redpepperquilts.com/2013/01/the-scrappy-trip-along-quilt.html

 As I hopped from blog to blog, quilters seemed to be having such fun with this simple and addictive patchwork, I was hooked. Unsure I would enjoy or be able to accomplish it’s random nature I hesitated, but how could so many people be wrong?

So I worked my way through my fabric stash, cut strips and then discarded a few. I added as many as were big enough from my new Moda Scrap Bag (disappointingly not many, about 6 and mostly fabrics I wouldn’t normaly choose) Then I Joined, cut, rearranged and stitched. Fabulously fun and simple. The blocks flew together.  However my ability to totally loose myself in randomness, was harder than I thought. I did reach a happy compromise and placed the darkest wam fabric across the diagonal of each block. Who am I kidding? I also sorted all the strips into colour piles and picked one of each for the blocks……totally failed the randomness test!

I may have confirmed random does not sit well with me but all is not lost. I am reaquainted with my fabric stash, which is now very tidy. Plus those Moda scraps, they gave a freshness and lift to this quilt, that may not be present in the second one. Finally I have finished my first lap quilt of 2013 (and in time to give it to my Mum for her Birthday) and am well on the way to finishing the next one for our sofa.

A tutorial for this can be found  at http://quiltville.com/scrappytrips.shtml Happy scrapping!