Beach Jelly Roll Quilt

Woohoo! I've finished another quilt! This is the most quilting I've done in years! :) I made this striped jelly roll quilt for my friend who just moved to Miami. Her birthday is coming up in August, and I thought maybe she could use a little beach quilt. It's also big enough to be a lap quilt if she needs something to cuddle with on the couch. It's about 45 wide x 60 long.

To make the stripes, I just sewed the strips of a jelly roll together and then cut them in to 5 1/2 inch "chunks." Then I sewed 3 of the "chunks" together to make the full strip. I had 2 chunks left over that I think I might use to make someone a pillow later on.

Basting this quilt went so much faster than my Mario Quilt. We didn't have to move the furniture around! But I did have to maneuver around the cats... They just love laying on whatever project I'm working on. Not to mention they like to paw at or bite at the pins. The one pictured here (Sasha) even bit and ripped a piece of tape off of the floor that was holding the backing fabric down! What a mischievous little cat!!

I had lots of different FMQ designs run through my head before I started quilting this one. My top 3 choices were stippling, wavy lines, and loop-de-loops. The loop-de-loops won out because I didn't think stippling would stand out enough and I'm having too much trouble with my walking foot to do the wavy lines right now. I actually really like how it turned out with this FMQ pattern. The loop-de-loops kind of remind me of that bubbly seaweed (thank you Google for helping me find a picture!).

Here's a close-up of the quilting. See what I mean about the seaweed thing? (Maybe that's just all in my head? Either way I like it!) Maybe I'll use this again some day, but there are just so many good quilting designs to try that I don't want to repeat too often!

And now, to end the post, here are some more pictures (for your pure enjoyment) after the quilt came out of the dryer. It turned out so crinkly I just love it! Too bad I'm sending it away!!! :(





Check out that stray string I didn't catch by the binding in this last photo - whoops! I wonder if my friend will notice... (I bet it's not the only one. Haha!)

Happy crafting!!!

Finished Jelly Roll Quilt

This post includes a lot of firsts for me:

1) This is my first finished quilt of 2012! (Shouldn't have taken me so long to get to my first quilt finish!)

2) This is the first quilt I've ever made with a jelly roll - in fact the first jelly roll I've ever purchased or used!

3) This is the first quilt I've ever machine quilted!

4) This is the first quilt I've ever started and finished in the same week!

Wow, it felt really good to write all of that! :) As a brief overview, I bought the jelly roll from JoAnn Fabrics on Monday evening. I put all of the 9 patch squares together that night. Tuesday night I sewed them all together and added the borders. Wednesday I didn't work on it at all. Thursday I sewed on the binding and hand-stitched it all to secure it to the back of the quilt. This might very well be my fastest finish ever.

I'm planning on giving this quilt to my sister for watching our cats while we're gone on vacation. She'll have to deal with their rambunctiousness for a little over 2 weeks and I know they're going to drive her crazy!

I used fusible batting inside, and I LOVED it! I did pin down around the edges, but I didn't have to spend a lot of time pinning everything together to be able to quilt the top. It almost seemed too easy...almost. I stitched a large diagonal pattern onto the quilt that makes it almost look a little like argyle.

My favorite part of the quilt is the binding. I used the leftover strips from the jelly roll, so it's all different colors. I think it makes the quilt very festive. All-in-all, I'm pretty happy with this little quilt, so I think I'm going to have to make one for myself sometime. I'll be linking this up to Crazy Mom Quilts, Confessions of a Fabric Addict and AmyLouWho's Sew-n-tell so be sure to check out their other finishes of the week! Happy Crafting!

Jelly Roll!

I'll be linking up to my first WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced for today's post. This week I started my very first jelly roll project! My husband jokes that it looks like the state flag of Maryland except that there's no red in it. I'm from Wisconsin, so I have no idea what the Maryland state flag looks like. 

Back to the topic at hand...

I found this jelly roll at JoAnn Fabrics, normally $12 but with my 50% off coupon I got it for $6! (Take that Maryland!) I really liked the different fabric patterns so I decided I'd give it a try. I have seen a lot of quilts lately made with jelly rolls so I figured I would see what I could do. 

I came up with this layout of 9 patch squares. They will be 5.5 inches square when the whole quilt is sewn together, otherwise they are 6 inches square in this picture. I played around a lot with the pattern. I started off with all of the dominantly dark squares in rows and the dominantly light squares in rows and it looked too stripey, so I changed it around and ended up with the pattern in the picture. I think my camera makes the yellow and black colors stick out more than they do when you're actually looking at it. But, I kind of like the asymmetrical look of this. I didn't want it to be too patern-y. 

I did buy some additional fabric in coordinating colors/patterns for the borders. I did 3 borders, the first was cut at 3 inches wide, the second was cut at 3.5 inches wide and the third was cut at 2.5 inches wide. Right now I have the quilt completely top stitched in a diagonal pattern, so it just needs the binding attached.

I started this project on Monday, sewed the borders on and quilted it on Tuesday, and now I'm so close to finishing I can taste it! But, my husband just got home from a long business trip and has to head out again tomorrow, so I'm not turning tonight into a finish - hence the timeliness of my first WIP post! I'm hoping to get it all finished up for a Friday Finish, so stay tuned to see it all completed! Happy crafting!