Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Jelly Roll 1600 Quilt


If you haven't had the experience to make a fast jelly roll quilt, you may want to take the opportunity to do one up at your next retreat or weekend sew in!  I found the directions on the Internet from the Great Jelly Roll Race!  The video was my introduction and then I went to the website to see more details on the process.  Check it out if you might be interested.

It was my plan to sew the 40 some jelly roll strips together during my holiday break and I did just that.  However, I never got around to posting in my blog about it.  The process sure was a lot of fun and one evening I could hardly help myself from staying up way too late into the night. 

The first evening I got all the strips ready.  I was using up odds and ends from a jelly roll, so I cut many of my own strips in the same yellow and blue color scheme.  That went along OK.  I counted them out and bundled them in groups of 10 strips each until I had 4 piles.  I threw in two extra to be sure it would be like a full pack. 





The next evening was reserved for piecing the strips end to end on the diagonal, just as for binding strips.  That went quickly enough. 


Flannel print for the reverse side
During a Sunday night after supper I started to piece the longest seam.  I thought I had a way to keep it from tangling, but it was not successful at all!  I had a wicked mess of the longest seam.  I am not sure how to do it differently to avoid such a tangle.  The only thing I can think of is to pre-measure and cut that long strip in half. 


Needs to be pin basted with safety pins

I'll be doing the quilting soon and getting it bound with some blue and yellow print.

Stretched out on the floor


When that is complete, I'll check back in on the blog with more photos.