Jelly Roll Slice Shortcut Quilt Blog Hop

I was super excited at the start of the year when I was approached by The Fat Quarter Shop to participate in a blog hop for a new Jelly Roll pattern that they had coming out.

I am delighted with this little quilt, which was snaffled up by Bird as soon as she saw it

 I have seen various strip pieced quilts in the past, but could never really get my head around how they came together in the end. On top of that I have some jelly rolls and I really do not know what to do with them other than use them for binding, so they just sit there gathering dust. Curiosity piqued (and ego stoked, let’s be honest), I decided to jump on board. Let’s not mention all the WIPs that I posted about a few weeks ago, shhhhh, be nice!

Anyway, when the pattern came I gave it a good read and got started. This quilt came together fast! I made the crib size which only requires 17 strips plus your background fabric and the top itself got put together in two nights after work / kids in bed – so not a lot of time. The thing I loved the most about this pattern was the really clever pressing instructions. If you follow them, when it comes time to piece your quilt top all of your seams nest together nicely, which makes matching things up really easy. The pattern is also quite forgiving. For some reason I really struggle to sew long straight lines, which is what you have to do when you are strip piecing, so some of my blocks were a little wonky when it came time to put it all together, but I don’t think that is evident at all in the finished product. I really love this quilt. To me, it reminds me of stack of books. I am a bookworm and I do love a good pile of books.

Hmmm, the stack of books next to my bed isn't quite as pretty

So onto my quilt...I was lucky enough to win a custom 2.5 inch strip bundle from the lovely Jennie at Clover & Violet as part of one of the Sew Mama Sew giveaway days. But since I didn’t know what to do with them, they kind of languished. I had just enough strips for the project, and they had been expertly curated by Jennie in a lovely bundle of bluey-aqua, purple and yellow (so I can take absolutely no credit for the lovely fabric choices here). Bam! Fabric decision made. I used this beautiful grey fabric from Elizabeth Hartman’s Rhoda Ruth collection for my background. I think it makes the colours pop and is lovely and soft while still adding a bit of visual interest. I had a bit of extra background fabric left over so I used it to add 2.5” borders to my quilt, which took the finished size to around 45” square.

I backed it in the Ikea Britten print (LOVE it! I bought 6 metres from Ikea the other day) and I love that it was wide enough that I didn’t have to piece the back.

I used scraps left over from the quilt top to make the binding, combined with some delicious AMH Loominous that I had left over from binding my Sea Star quilt, I knew it would come in handy!!

Look at that texture! This may be my new favourite for fast quilting

I used an all over serpentine stitch to quilt it in Aurifil 2600. The soft grey was a perfect match for the quilt – it blended perfectly with the background and was subtle enough that it went well with all the different colours in the quilt. I had been unsure about how to quilt it, but when I saw Megan @ Canoe Ridge Creations’ True Love Mini quilt on Instagram, I thought “Jackpot!”.  Embarrassingly, I had seen quilts on Instagram quilted with a serpentine stitch before and thought that  it looked quite awesome but I didn’t think my machine had that stitch and I was annoyed about that. I thought how could my fancy pants machine not have such a simple stitch? Um, it did. Oh. On the chart it just looked a bit like a zig zag. So all this time I haven’t used it when I could have! Which is annoying because it is AWESOME for quilting. I don’t know if it was my imagination, but it seemed really fast – much faster than a straight stitch, which doesn’t really make sense, but there you go. It adds a lovely texture and again is quite forgiving.

I just wanted to show off the lovely blooms on my Mandevilla

Make sure you go and check out all the other quilts on the hop - I know I will be. 

Taunja of Carried Away Quilting
Cheryl of Meadow Mist Designs
Terri Ann of Childlike Fascination
Eileen of Eileen in Stitches
Cristy of Love You Sew
Hayley of Moobird Stitches (that's me!)
Shelley of The Carpenter's Daughter Who Quilts
Kathryn of Kathryn Jones Quilts

If you want to make your own Jelly Roll Slice, here are the details on where to get the pattern or find the video or get a quilt kit or fabric. To celebrate this launch, The Fat Quarter Shopwill be having a 15% off Jelly Roll sale going through to Sunday 28^th Feb, no coupon code necessary.

Quilt Stats

Pattern: Jelly Roll Slice by Fat Quarter Shop

Size: 45” x 45”

Fabric: Various strips gifted to me by Jennie @ Clover & Violet

Background: Rhoda Ruth Necklace in Grey

Backing: Ikea Britten

Binding: Scrappy

Quilting: Aurifil 2600 50wt

So there you have it, if you have someone having a baby or have stacks of jelly rolls in your life this is a good pattern for you! 

A Handmade Style pencil case

I made something else from Anna @Noodlehead's book Handmade Style. 

This time I made this pencil case:

I pieced the exterior out of my hexie box (in colour order, of course). I still have a lot left. Perhaps I'll have to make another one! 

This one is destined to be gifted - one of Moo's carers is leaving from her after school care, so this is a little gift to thank her for taking such good care of my big little love. 

I made my own bias binding but I had trouble stitching the second side down by machine, so I hand stitched it. This case probably has more hand stitching than machine in it.