Saturday, June 4, 2011

More Bama Bound Quilts

I had so much fun making and sending off the previous two quilts that I thought I'd make two more (well, I thought it would be one, but there were leftovers...).

I had this "jelly roll*" of hot pinks setting on one of my shelves. It was once meant as a gift to a pink-loving quilter, but as fate would have it, she gave up quilting and set me her pink and red stash (a delightful surprise!), before I had the opportunity to send the jelly roll to her. So, the roll just sat around here and I wondered what I would ever do with that many pinks.

When Michelle at Bama Bound Quilts announced that they had identified another 45 kids who could use quilts, I knew then how the jelly roll would be used!

I combined the strips from the jelly roll with other 2 1/2 inch strips from my scrap stash (say that 3 times fast!) and with some fresh cuts and away I went! This is a basic rail fence pattern. Each block is 6 1/2 inches.


But I had leftovers! About 24 rail fence blocks, and lots of end pieces (strips of 3 - 2 1/2 inch squares). Well, okay, if I make up a few more strips, I could put them together as 9-square blocks, but how to mate them with the rail fence blocks...

A friend happened to send an email right about that time with a picture of a Kaffe Fassett quilt she thought she might like to make. As best I could tell, he built the quilt from the middle out, using successively larger squares (based on the number 24, i think). That gave me the idea of building from the middle by putting all of the 9 square blocks there and surrounding them with the rail fence blocks. To make the quilt big enough, I added another ring of 6 1/2 squares with rail fence blocks on the corners. It's pretty wild, but some kid is going to love it.


*the link is to show a random example of jelly rolls. The one I bought had been cut and put together by one of my local quilt shops.

2 comments:

  1. Is a Jelly Roll actually sewn together or just rolled up somehow?

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  2. It's x number of 2 1/2 inch strips rolled together and tied. Other companies have other names for pretty much the same thing.

    I should note here that the quilts measure, at the moment, 49 x 61.5 and 43 x 56. I will bind the smaller one in pink, and the larger in scrap binding (short strips sewn together). The backing for both is a multi-colored, wide-width batik (pink, yellow orange, green).

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