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Saturday, January 5, 2008

A Jelly Roll that you can't eat

In the quilting world, a jelly roll is a set of fabric strips, usually 2-1/2 inches wide by 44 inches. Moda makes jelly rolls but I'm not sure if other fabric companies do. I know some quilt shops make their own jelly rolls for sale. Anyway Moda's jelly rolls consist of all of the fabrics in a certain line. One strip of each. Usually there are 40 strips in a jelly roll and they look like this (this happens to be a picture of the jelly roll I'm about to post about).

OK blogger just lost my entire post after the picture. I am not happy. I'll try to remember what all I posted.

OK I was never planning to make anything from a jelly roll because I prewash all of my fabric. You cannot prewash strips-they'll fray too much. So if I was going to use a jelly roll, I would have to use all new unwashed fabric. Well I came across a sale and you know the rest. I bought a jelly roll (just like the picture above) at 40% off. I found a pattern in Quilt magazine that uses one jelly roll to make a lap quilt. It looked easy enough. Thursday night I sorted the colors (took maybe 20 minutes) and Friday I made the entire top-in one day. ONE DAY!! I've never made anything this big in one day! And it turned out very cute, if I do say so myself. The pattern calls for a border but I think this is big enough without one. It's about 50 x 60 inches. Plus I'm too cheap to buy fabric for the border. I have to buy for the backing and binding as it is. Anyway this is the pic of the top (if you look closely at the far right side, you might see a hand sticking out. That is the hand of Sammy's new American Girl doll, which is called Sarah. Sara. One of those.)

I'm going to order some fabric for the binding and backing and when it's all done, I'll post it again. I'm almost afraid to quilt it for fear of ruining it. And I really hope those red centers don't bleed when I wash it.

7 comments:

Melissa Boo said...

I love the quilt. Wish I had the patience for that and the space. One of these days.

busylizzy said...

I'm not quite sure how I found you but I guess it was some search in blog-land. Love the quilt and I too, always wash every piece of fabric that goes in my sewing room. I suggest using one of those rags that catches dye in the washer. The one I have used is Carbona Dye Grabber. Try it. You can use it 25 times I think. I bought mine at Target. Good luck and keep up the good work!

Jacque said...

Beautiful! I am a fellow quilter stopped pre-washing once I was turned onto color-catchers. I use the Shout brand and have NEVER had a problem, whether with clothing or sewing fabric. I was really concerned with a batiq (sp?) quilt, but those catchers really do catch it all! This has been a huge time saver in my quilting.

Thanks for sharing the info. on the jelly-roll and the finished product. Now I'm ready to go find one of my own!

Jacque

Chrissie said...

Love your quilt... I must say though, I never wash my fabrics first and have never had a problem but a colour catcher is a great idea!

Sarah Coggins said...

Looks beautiful! How great you could do this in one day. I attempted to quilt once and got too frustrated. Always amazed by those who can and make such beautiful creations. tfs!

Erin said...

That is beautiful! Now I want a jelly roll lap quilt.

kimi said...

any way you could share where your pattern came from? It's PERFECT!

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