An Ombre Jelly Roll Quilt / Beauties Pageant 148

Some quilts and fabrics just insist on getting together. Such was the case with my Ridiculously Easy Jelly Roll Quilt pattern and Vanessa Christenson’s Ombre Fairy Dust Metallic collection. I have zero need for a rainbow quilt in my life, but I really wanted to see how Ridiculously Easy would look in all those luscious ombre fabrics. Would I have been satisfied with mocking up the quilt in EQ7? Perhaps, but the Ombre Fairy Dust line includes 34 different fabrics. It seemed simpler just to sew the project!

I’ve made this pattern a bunch of times. This was the first time, however, that I was a super stickler for fabric placement so I could get that awesome color-gradation effect. I cut each of 29 jelly roll strips into four segments, per the pattern, which resulted in two dark and two light pieces of each color. Then I labeled those strips 1 through 29. I sometimes sew at night under artificial light, and without the labels, I would have struggled to differentiate between some of the colors.

In the top foreground chevron of my quilt top, I placed a dark rectangle of each color. The next two chevrons feature light rectangles, and the bottom one used the remaining dark segments. I also alternated the order in which I laid out the ombre fabrics. The result is that most of the warm oranges and reds live in the middle of each row, which I like. I used a dark navy as the background. I am slightly obsessed with orange and blue quilts, and with the warm colors concentrated in the center, the quilt almost seems more like a homage to that complementary combination instead of a rainbow quilt.

I chain-pieced to keep the project pieces organized. I sewed all the base units first, per the pattern. Then I added the end pieces to the tops of the base units. Next, and without cutting anything apart, I chained-pieced the end pieces to the bottoms. (Some strips didn’t require an end piece. I sewed them into the chain, too, just to keep them in the right order with everything else.) I should have taken a picture … All that fabric connected together looked like a hot mess when really the technique saved my sanity!

So, as I mentioned, I don’t need a rainbow quilt in my life, and to be honest, the dark background here, although lovely, is not practical with two Golden Retrievers in the house. I often gift quilts to friends, but I can’t think of anyone who would especially like this beauty. 

All of this is to say that I’m considering selling this quilt once it’s completed. I recently opened an Etsy shop without promoting it anywhere (I have all of two sales—I’m considering this iteration of my shop a soft opening while I get a few things straightened out!). In the past, I’ve been pretty against selling my quilts. I’m convinced the only people who would pay what a quilt is really worth is another quilter, and why pay several hundred dollars for something that you can sew yourself?

I welcome any and all advice on this front—on selling quilts in general and on selling through Etsy in particular.

PDF and print versions of Ridiculously Easy are available through my Etsy shop.

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