Worldwide Quilt Day, Last Red Scraps and Lots of Strippie Tops

Hi there friends! Why don’t you grab a cup of your favorite beverage and have a seat. We’ve got a lot of Stuff to get through today! This will be a picture-heavy post, at least by my usual standards.

Last Saturday, we (Ruby, Kim and I) attended the World Wide Quilting Day event in Sandy, Utah. Joining us were Cathy (Ruby’s sister) and Jenny, Cousin Kim’s niece (and my late Cousin Carrie’s daughter). We had a blast. After we got settled into our favorite spot (by a window and an electrical outlet) and got our machines set up, we wandered over to the stage area. There, boxes and boxes of donated fabrics and scraps and books and patterns and….anything quilt/sewing related were spread out along with tons of quilters (both figuratively and literally) were searching for treasures. 

Our group was restrained in our acquisitions; I concentrated on smaller scraps, strings and solid yardage, which were curiously overlooked by everyone else. I also picked up a brand new bamboo pillow form still in the package. Bonus: I’m short, so it was good to sit on while I sewed! Ruby found a needlepoint owl piece that she is going to make into a pillow for her daughter who loves owls. Everyone else got a few pieces here and there. 

Last week on the blog I showed the little scrappy quilt that I’d made from the scrap challenge baggie I picked up at last year’s event. Of the 26 kits that were checked out in 2025, sixteen of us returned them as finished quilts. We were entered into a drawing for $100, and I won! Kim took my picture with the quilt and Ben Franklin.

While we were there, I sewed three Strippie quilt tops, which I’ll show and talk about later in the post. The food was plentiful and delicious, although I will admit that I may have had one or two extra helpings of apricot crumble (hold the crumble, but beware the sugar!)

Did you do anything quilt-related on Worldwide Quilting Day??

The end of March is upon us, and I managed to finish up all my red block sewing for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. First, I made 15 red string blocks that will finish at 6”. They are pinned in a group for donation to Quilts for Kids. 

And finally, I was able to eke out four 6” (finished) crumb blocks, also for Quilts for Kids. 

But even when added to the four from last year, my count is only up to 8. Maybe next year I’ll have more time and scraps to make up the final 7 to get me to a full set of 15. 

***We now interrupt this blog post for some kitty pictures, which have been scarce lately. Ruby gave me a birthday present in this box. Alfie turned his nose up at the Talavera pitcher, but fully endorsed the box. This pic was taken a few days later during one of his many forays into cardboardland. Humans just can’t appreciate the finer things in life!

Darla agrees with Alfie. But she is much more dignified. Here she is, regally “loaf”-ing on her mid-level cat tree perch.  “You may carry on,” she said. 

So, back to the Strippie quilts. And it should be evident with these quilt tops why all of a sudden I had an urge to take solids from the giveaway tables. The cute focal prints were donations, mostly from my friend Wanda. 

I’ve seen these Strippie quilts done in a very formulaic manner before, but I prefer to let the fun print determine the eventual size, depending on how much of it there is to play with. Here’s a closer picture of the colorful print.

There was enough of the vegetable fabric below to do not only this top and its backing, but another top that is cut and has yet to be sewn. 

And again, a closer shot of the fabrics.

This next top is the first one I played with when pre-cutting all the possibilities into sewing kits. The garden theme is just so happy and bright! No close-up for this one because the print is large enough to clearly distinguish. 

I’ll give all the measurements once they’re quilted and bound, but mostly they start with width-of-fabric strips (hence the name Strippie). I do trim the edges enough so that a single width-of-fabric can be used as the backing/fold-over binding. 

The above three tops were done at WWQuilting Day, as I said. But I was on a roll and kept going with this concept during the week….

Here’s a cute elephant quilt top. 

And here is another one in progress. This isn’t a Strippie, though. I had a large batch of kid print fat quarters that Ruby found at an estate sale (27 FQ’s to be exact). I selected this fox and squirrel print to start. There were 4 fat quarters of this design, but I only used 3. The other FQ was cut into two Zipper blocks and strings. 

And here’s the close-up of this fabric. 

I’ll finish up the border on this and then hang it with the others to be quilted. I’m hoping that Angela at So Scrappy will announce April’s color of the month today so that I can get started on it this weekend. Update: she did! April’s color is PINK, 

This morning is our Block of the Month class. Once that is done, my goal today is to finish the garden clean-up in the courtyard before the rains begin for all next week. Also, we (Bruce Kim and I) will be taking off for Arizona to visit family next Saturday. I’ll have a post up Friday night, but not sure when or if I’ll be able to link it up to the RSC as we’re driving for a couple days. But driving will probably be easier and faster than attempting to fly these days. Enough said.

Have a great week!