Last week I showed you how I created a quilting Jelly Roll using my Accuquilt. As someone who is Beginning Quilting, assembling a quilt top using a Jelly Roll makes beginning quilting both fun and easy.
Since I have no idea what I’m doing, I started by watching this video called Jelly Roll Jam Quilt by Fat Quarter Shop. My strips aren’t nearly as long as an actual Jelly Roll because I was cutting from half-yard pieces, each of my strips are about 2.5″ wide x 18″ long. A Jelly Roll has strips that are 2.5″ wide x 40″ long.
I also was working with fewer fabrics. All this to say ~ my version is very modified. But, I needed a place to start and the Jelly Roll Jam video provided me an excellent way to dive right in.
This is the quilt top I created using my first fabric collection that I had cut into strips. I know it lacks all of those design elements that make a quilt gorgeous. For me, I am trying to understand the process of piecing and quilting. Once I have a firm grasp of these techniques, THEN I can begin to understand design.
After piecing the first quilt top, this is all that remains. It isn’t enough to create binding, but I am not about to toss it either. I can turn these pieces into coasters or hot pads. I held back a fat quarter of the orange and white flowered fabric for binding.
Here’s what I did. {I’m using the second Jelly Roll to demonstrate} I lined up my strips into the order I wanted them on my quilt. Not much real planning, just a simple placement.
Then I began sewing the strips together, following the video’s suggestion. It’s techniques like the one’s in the video that made this project possible. Things like sewing order and pressing direction are what keep these quilt tops from being some kind of unholy mess.
The video says to sew together 3 sets of six strips with the Moda Jelly Roll strips being 40″ long. My strips are only 18-ish” long so I did 6 sets of six strips. After I finished sewing all of my strips together I trimmed them down to 18″ wide.
At this point I am now on my own to figure out how to piece the rest of my quilt together. The reason is my strips aren’t as long as the ones in the video. In order to create this quilt I followed the video instructions that said to sub-cut 6.5″ x 12.5″ rectangles across the 40″ strip.
When I did this, I had these unused pieces. When I started putting together the second Jelly Roll I didn’t want to cut off all of this.
Since my strips are only 18″ wide x 12.5″ I am going to sub-cut my strips into 9″ x 12.5″ rectangles and see how it works out. From there, I will begin connecting my rectangles with the remaining 2.5″ strips. Hopefully this will create a 40-ish” x 40-ish” quilt.
I used yellow/gray/white strips to connect the quilt blocks side by side. When each row was finished then I added the gray/white strips to connect the second row. These strips were obviously not long enough (about 18″) to go across the quilt so I randomly pieced them. Because of the design you cannot tell that it isn’t one long piece.
The second quilt top went together a little faster because I was more familiar with the process, but it still required some thinking through. After all of the Accuquilt cutting and then quilt piecing, this is all that remains. Of course, I will hold on to these scraps, but it is exciting to take some fabric from my stash and then turn it into something useful.
All that is left is put the quilts together and then quilt them. Piece of cake!
I will be back soon with the final results. In the meantime, it’s a beautiful Texas spring day and my yard is calling.
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Tabitha Simmons says
April 14, 2014 at 8:52 amA jelly roll is [approximately] 40 x 2.5 [exactly]. The strips are cut ‘selvege to selvege’ and rolled together. I say approximate because not all fabric is the same width, although quilting cottons tend to usually measure 40″-44″. One problem, I find, with cutting the strips perpendicular to the selvege is that you don’t get any ‘stretch’ in the fabric. This makes it harder (for me anyway) to match long pieces together because I cannot work with the fabric as well. I have to admit that I don’t like having too much stretch either (bias cut pieces), but if you would’ve cut your strips perpendicular to the selvege you would’ve had a proper jelly roll (minus several strips). I also would say to you that when making jelly rolls (I know you bought this fabric without knowledge of what you were going to do with it) you should try to stick with smaller prints as they ‘read’ the same color when cut into 2.5 strips. I would suggest calicos, solids, tone on tones, and even tone on tone marbles, just to name a handful. I recently learned how to quilt (within the past few years) and I have owned a longarm for the past year and a half bc I’ve progressed so quickly. So technically this is all a ‘beginner’s’ advice! FYI- I admire what you do.
Quilt Paradigm says
April 15, 2014 at 8:48 amI think your tops look GREAT!!! Being a person who cannot follow a pattern to save my life, I really like the way you ran with it and did what works for you!!