I looked around at a few jelly roll quilts whilst I waited for my fabric to arrive. The finished quilt top should end up being somewhere around the 50" x 60" size, which is about 2 strips of fabric wide. I wanted to have a bit more variation so I decided to sew all the strip together and then cut each strip in half, seperate them into different piles and then sew them all together again.
One of the things that I struggled with in the beginning was getting all the strips to line up properly after mitring. However, someone in Crafty Bums posted a tip about making sure to match up the pinked edges and then decide which side of the top corner square to sew from and to go down to the corresponding square in the bottom right corner. I figured that a picture might be better so here you go (and just so that you know, I chose to sew from the right of the corner square - and it worked perfectly!)
Last night was the race. Would you like to see how I got on?
What do you think? I'm fairly happy with it - I just
love this fabric and the mix of paisleys, flowers, dots and stripes and muted colours. There's too much pooling at the top and bottom of the quilt though - too many of the same fabrics next to each other (especially at the bottom) and lots of browns at the top and purples at the bottom
 |
| Lots of pooling. Grrr! |
I obviously didn't mix the strips up enough, so I think I'm going to have to undo a couple of the entire strips and reposition them otherwise it's going to annoy me too much! I'm not going to muck around with it a lot though, just try and seperate some of the matching strips. I'll keep you updated!
Things I've learnt from doing this;
✿ That first row takes f-o-r-e-v-e-r!!! It feels a bit like a marathon - you start off all keen but try and pace yourself, you start to wane a little bit in the middle section (especially when you realise there's a lot of matching going on with your fabric strips - grrrr!) and then speed up towards the end when you realise you're nearly at the finish line!
✿ I didn't mix my fabrics up enough - I tried to sort them into piles where the fabrics wouldn't overlap which obviously failed! Some people have said that they threw all the fabrics up in the air and picked them at random, which I think I might try next time!
✿ The jelly rolls leave lots of fluff over everything - vacuuming and clothes washing is necessary after a race!
✿ I'm not a speedy quilter - I was nowhere near the 'less than an hour' target! I think I worry too much about getting my seams nice and straight
✿ Somehow I've managed to end up with wonky sides which I guess is based on how I cut it at the end - that will be easy to rectify once I've added on a border but a little bit annoying
✿ I don't normally do random so this quilt technique is quite good for coming up with a random pattern, although I'm obviously too much of a perfectionist as well based on the fact that I want to fiddle with it!!!! I do love this method though and am planning on making a few more things like this - my family might be able to expect lots of quilts over the next few Christmas's and birthdays!!!!
Now I just need to decide on what to back it with and I'll be able to finish it up.
I'll hopefully post some more pictures of my quilt next week when I've played around with it and let you know how I got on with my times (there's another race Saturday and a league table is being drawn up! Do pop along and join the group if you want to join in the fun ☺)
See you next time,
Sx
Todays sky ● cloudy with rain. Again!
