Another Jelly Roll Bites the Dust

Back in November I declared war on my jelly rolls. They had been “aging” in my stash too long. Use them or lose them, I said!

Toward that goal, I finished this Christmas gift, my Christmas in Bold Colors Quilt. It’s the complement to my Ridiculously Easy Jelly Roll Quilt, which featured more muted fabrics.

It’s a different kind of quilt for me, with lots of saturated color and patterns and none of my favorite Kona Snow. (The solid I did use was Kona Parchment.) Most of the fabric is from Basic Grey’s 25th and Pine line, left over from some mini quilts I made. I also got to use a bunch of scraps—some from my standard scrap bin, some from my Christmas scraps. Man, it felt good to use them up.

As always, I tried some new techniques to further hone my standard quilt-making procedure:

• After spray-basting my quilt sandwich, I ironed it on the front and back, on Chelsea’s recommendation. I’ll do this on future projects. It helped address any wrinkles before they became problems during quilting. I did have an issue with the pieced back shifting at some point in the process, and I didn’t realize it until I had completed the quilting. Perhaps in the future I’ll attach the back with spray, iron it, and then attach and iron the front? Hmm ...

• I’ve had problems in the past with puckering while quilting, so I started quilting with my walking foot and set the pressure to zero. There was too much play between the walking foot and quilt, though, and my quilting lines were wiggly. Then I set my pressure to 0.5, and everything went much more smoothly. I still had a lot of control over the quality of the stitches, however, so I had to be attentive to maintain a consistent speed.

• I quilted this project with straight lines. I’m not a fan of an all-over grid with lines that intersect at 90-degree angles (I don’t know why—it’s just me!), so I omitted some of the lines, which resulted in a pattern that echoes the diamonds in the piecing. It reminds me of the quilting I did here, yet another Basic Grey project of mine.

This diamond pattern is the result of my not-quite-all-over-grid quilting.

Here the quilting creates echoes around the diamonds in the piecing.

I do my bindings differently for each quilt. For this project I sewed the binding
to the quilt front and finished it from the back. The bobbin thread is visible
from the front but blends in well with the holly border.

I didn’t follow a pattern for this quilt; I figured out my own way to cut the fabric and construct the quilt top. I did, however, take the design from Thimbleblossoms’ Jellybean Quilt. If you’re into this quilt, that’s the best place to go for advice on making your own version. : )

Linking up to Let’s Bee Social, Needle and Thread Thursday, and Finish It Up Friday ...