Pageant Highlight Reel / Beauties Pageant 266

I decided this week it was time to tally the WIPs, and friends, the numbers were sobering. I have 10 projects in process and another 4 cut and ready to sew. A total of 14 might not seem like a big number to you, but many more would overwhelm me. Until I can chisel away at them, any new projects need to be ones I’d sew start to finish right now, like a QuiltCon 2025 submission or a new pattern.

But that doesn’t stop me from daydreaming about what might come next, and recent Beauties Pageants have provided more than enough inspiration ...

Orinoco Flow

Sandra’s Orinoco Flow is a throw-size version of a baby quilt pattern of hers that was published in Love Patchwork and Quilting last year. I have a soft spot in my heart for whole-composition designs, and Orinoco Flow does not disappoint ... It looks exactly like the original baby size; Sandra achieves the throw size by enlarging the components, not by adding more blocks. And by the looks of it, Orinoco Flow will come together quickly!

Blue Pineapple Blocks

Gretchen’s collection of blue pineapple blocks is a showstopper, and think of all the scraps she busted through to make 64 blocks! I have never sewn a pineapple block quilt (the time commitment is daunting), but these blocks think I may need to tackle one.

Garden Party

Although neither my blog nor Instagram feed show any evidence of this, I have been playing with applique recently. It’s been fun to consider the possibilities of what I can accomplish outside of my usual piecing techniques. Gail’s Garden Party project uses a pattern by Laura Heine and an applique approach called “edge painting.” Once you open yourself up to applique, the possibilities of what you can create are limitless ...

I know many of you are like me and enjoy having multiple projects going at once. How may projects are too many for you? Which of these designs are tempting you, too?!

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National Sew a Jelly Roll Day 2024 / Beauties Pageant 265

Attention fans of precuts! Tomorrow is the third Saturday of September, and you know what that means: It’s National Sew a Jelly Roll Day. (For real. Check out Moda’s post about the yearly event, including free patterns, here!)

I consider myself a jelly roll ninja. As a stash curator, jelly rolls are my sweet spot, giving me a cross-section of a fabric collection at a great price point. As a pattern designer, jelly rolls can do things that layer cakes and fat quarter bundles can’t. I love the challenge of working with those 2.5-inch strips to come up with new and innovative quilt designs. In fact, I enjoy working with jelly rolls so much that I designed 14 patterns to include in my first book—Not-Your-Typical Jelly Roll Quilts—which will be published by C&T next year.

But my Still Pretty Simple Jelly Roll Quilt pattern is one that you can get your hands on today for satisfying jelly roll sewing tomorrow. Plus, it’s one of my Almost Free for Charity patterns, which means I will donate part of the proceeds from each $3 pattern to an organization that supports the Down syndrome community. (I talk about my own kiddo with DS in this post.)

So, are you game to bust open a lovely roll of strips and get going? Here are a few things to know about the Still Pretty Simple Jelly Roll Quilt:

* This pattern requires just 32 jelly roll strips and 1.75 yards of background fabric to make a 56.5" x 64.5" throw-size project.

* The 16 elongated log cabin blocks you’ll make can be configured in a bunch of different ways. As you can see from the accompanying pictures, I’ve arranged mine to be large arrows, a huge X, and a big star. (Other suggestions are illustrated here.)

* I can’t say this about all jelly roll patterns, but you can use strips cut from fat quarters to sew this design. Two 2.5" x 20" strips cut from a fat quarter equal one jelly roll strip. You’ll need 32 pairs of strips—that is, 64 in total—to sew this pattern.

Need your own copy of the pattern? Pick it up for $3 in my Etsy shop!

I am always (always!) on the lookout for clever and creative jelly roll patterns. Even if you’re not celebrating National Sew a Jelly Roll Day with a project this year, I would love to hear your suggestions. : )

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• Post your finish in the linky tool. (No links to your own giveaway or linky, please!)
• Point your readers back here with a text link or use the button above.
• Visit and comment on other participants’ finishes.

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Have You Seen My Sewjo? / Beauties Pageant 264

Thank you for your kind words about my upcoming book release! As I wrote in the acknowledgments to that collection of patterns, I owe so much to this blogging community. I wouldn’t be the quilter I am today without the encouragement and mad quilting skills I’ve encountered here. So again, thank you!

Designing the projects and writing the book required a ton of time and effort. Then there was the not-so-small matter of making all 14 projects, which range in size from wall hangings to bed-size quilts, over the course of nine months. At this point, the big milestones—the text, illustrations, and photographs—are finished, but there’s still work to do.

The result of this process? I am one tired quilter, and it has affected my nonbook projects. I’ve been thinking a lot about quilting, doodling ideas and considering whether I should attempt a QuiltCon submission, but the mere thought of those projects I began and then set aside to work on the book makes me want to cower under my sewing table. Where do I start?

Without the urgency to get any project in particular done, I came up with a plan. I’m tackling the lowest-hanging fruit. First, I bound the Kitty Cat quilt I got back from my longarmer a few weeks ago (here’s a shot of the flimsy before quilting) ...

Then I quilted a throw that has been basted for over a year (it’s Camille Roskelley’s Patchwork Sky pattern and is great for jelly rolls) ...

After binding that—perhaps this weekend?—I’ll move on to whatever WIP is furthest along in the quilt-making process (Rosemary quilt, I am looking at you!) ...

It’s worth noting that I am buying zero fabric because new fabric is just future WIPs, and my brain does not have the capacity to consider additional projects!

A few questions for you in conclusion ... How do you revive your sewjo? And when faced with a mountain of WIPs, where do you start? I know Leanne at Devoted Quilter will be launching her annual WIPS-B-GONE challenge soon. I’m super bad at following sewalongs and such unless I organize them myself, but that event may be the kick in the pants I need to forge ahead!

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• Post your finish in the linky tool. (No links to your own giveaway or linky, please!)
• Point your readers back here with a text link or use the button above.
• Visit and comment on other participants’ finishes.

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I Wrote a Book! / Beauties Pageant 263

Cover by C&T Publishing, Inc.

 

I can sum up the past year of my life in four words: I wrote a book! It’s been a long journey—my design process started even earlier, back in 2022—but the end is on the horizon. Not-Your-Typical Jelly Roll Quilts: 14 Cute & Creative Projects will release next April!

I have so many things to say about the 14 patterns I designed and sewed for this book, but all the quilty details will need to wait until next year. Right now, Not-Your-Typical Jelly Roll Quilts is available for preorder on sites like Amazon and Barnes & Noble. (The Amazon listing contains some of the project pictures in addition to the cover art—woo hoo!)

For those of you who’ve asked, I will be putting together and selling my own special book release bundle with autographed copies. More details on that next year, too ...

So, apparently, this whole post has been one big tease. The gist is, I wrote a beautiful book! We’ll all have to wait until next year to get our hands on it! 

: )

Cover photograph by Melanie Zacek.

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The pageant rules are simple:

• Post your finish in the linky tool. (No links to your own giveaway or linky, please!)
• Point your readers back here with a text link or use the button above.
• Visit and comment on other participants’ finishes.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter