Jelly Roll into 1600 Quilt

Using a jelly roll to make a 1600 Quilt is easy!  Check out this YouTube video to see for yourself!  It is a 1600 Quilt race where the winner sewed the quilt top in 35 minutes! 

• Jelly Roll:  Forty 2.5 inches by 44 inches strips of various fabrics from a collection.  These can be found already bundled at fabric or quilt shops.
• 1600 Quilt:  a quilt made using a jelly roll; it starts as 1600 inches because the strips from the jelly roll are sewn end to end to begin with.

I was not quite as fast as I lack experience, but I will tell you it was not hard.  I did not spend much over two hours making the top, which included cutting salvages off and ironing seams.

Here is the 1600 Quilt I made using the Enchanted Pond jelly roll.  I am excited to say someone will be receiving this quilt as a Christmas gift!

Instructions for Making Quilt Top:

1.  Cut salvages off of both ends of every strip.
2.  Sew strips end to end right sides together until all strips are sewn together making one long strip.  The sewing of strips can be done in any pattern you wish.  I did my randomly, but I would suggest that you have an idea of how many of each color you have so that you can get colors evenly distributed.
3.  Iron seams; this make your next seams flatter.
4.  Cut off 22 inches from one end of the long strip; this allows for various lengths of strips to appear in your quilt top.
5.  Now you will be taking the ends right side together and sewing your long strip into half of its length.  Essentially, you are folding this long strip in half.  Folding this much fabric in half is tough unless you have acres of space.  So all I did was find my ends and sew.  Yes there was some twisting, but I kept pushing them back until the end.
6.  When you are almost to the end, cut the loop that has been created.  Finish sewing the seam.   Remember to back stitch when starting and finishing seams.  When you open up your fabric after this seam, your strip will be two strips wide.
7.  Fold your new strip in half right sides together and sew.  Again, near the end, cut the loop.  Now your quilt is four strips wide.  When doing this step, there is less fabric to be managed.  Therefore, it is possible to organize fabric into neat piles so that twisting is avoided.
8.  Repeat step seven until your quilt is about a nice lap size rectangle with horizontal strips.  It takes folding the strips in half five times to get a finished top. 
9.  Press seams.
10.  Follow Heirloom Creations 1600 Quilt Tutorial if my instructions do not make sense to you or if you need to read it another way. 

 Left:  The various colors and prints that make up the Enchanted Pond jelly roll.  Middle:  The pile the long strip makes.  Right:  The top of the quilt.

Backing and Quilting the Top:

1.  Lay backing down with right side against the floor.  Smooth out. (Some cutting and sewing may need to be done so that you have a wide enough and long enough piece of backing.)
2.  Lay batting out on the wrong side of the backing fabric.  Smooth out.
3.  Lay the top of the quilt on the batting with right side up.  Smooth out.
4.  Keeping layers smooth and flat, use safety pins to pin all the layers together.  Start in the middle and work your way out.
5.  To make quilting the top easier roll up one end of the quilt about half way.
6.  Using seams as guidance and beginning near the half way point of the quilt, sew along the top and bottom of the strips.  You will be sewing long straight lines that go from one edge of the quilt to the other.  Look below to see this and see what part of the foot of my machine I lined up with the seam.  With my foot lined up where it is, I was sewing about 1/8" off of each side of the seams.  Keep repeating this over the whole quilt.

Make Bias Tape and Bind:

1.  Remind yourself that I do not like cheating on this step by reading my opinion in my Chevron Wedding Quilt post!  
2.  Follow Perfect Binding Tutorial for how to cut strips for the bias tape, sew the strips together, iron the bias tape, and attach the bias tape to the quilt front.  I started with strips of fabric that were 2.5 inches wide; this makes for binding edges that are a little over a half inch wide.
3.  Hand sew the bias tape to the back side of the quilt to bind.  Here is where I mean do not cheat.  Machine stitching will leave the front and back looking messy.  So take the time and hand sew with a Hidden Ladder Stitch (YouTube tutorial) that goes quite quickly once you get the hang of it.  I realize the woman uses a little pillow to do the tutorial but you will be doing the same thing with your bias tape.  You just will be folding your tape over to the back so that the edge of the quilt is in the center fold.  Then you will slip your needle from the back of the quilt through the other fold.  Tip...use the line of thread from sewing the binding to the front of the quilt as a line for keeping your bias tape fold, ladder stitch, and binding lined up. 

Good luck with your next project!  Remember, if you have questions for me, ask!

More Rodeo Shots

Last weekend Erin and Daisy represented the Colorama Rodeo in Ritzville.  It was fun to actually go into Ritzville.  Sure we knew where the gas station and McDonalds were there, but now we have actually been into town.  It is small and cute.  The parade was the shortest yet, but it was the first time we have staged at an airport (at least that is what the folks called it).

The rodeo part of these queening trips we go on is what I enjoy most.  I also really like capturing pictures at them.  For this particular rodeo, I set out with a goal of capturing a certain shot and I got it.  I wanted this shot because I got it from a different angle early on in the season and wanted to take advantage of seeing this team in action again.  So here's the shot!  It is the back shot of Jacob Stacey steer wrestling while younger brother Caleb McMillan hazed.   These two are two of the most fun cowboys to watch.

At Ritzville rodeo, Caleb was a pick up man except for in bull riding because he rode a bull.  He also hazed for Jacob and team roped with Jacob.  Besides the steer wrestling and team roping, Jacob rode a bronc, hazed, and was a pick up man during bull riding.  These two are cowboys!  Not only do they compete but they also help out at a rodeo!

The front shot looks like this, and I took it in Grand Coulee during the Colorama Rodeo.

 

So enough about cowboys...cowgirls also exist at rodeos.  Check out Erin and Daisy doing their run in in Ritzville.  They looked good as always.  Daisy always amazes us by how well she does in the arena.  You can see it in her eyes how much she loves rodeo!

The entertainment at Ritzville was on fire!  After all, this drill team had fireworks firing off the tops of their flags during their routine.  How cool is that?  Cool!  What was also cool was how their horses were so calm and used to carrying live fireworks around.  It was great!

 

Watch for Erin and Daisy in the next couple weeks as they hit up a few last events before handing the crown on!

Chevron Wedding Quilt

I'm happy to announce I bought fabric and finished my first quilting project in less than three weeks  a couple weeks ago.  I will not be keeping this first quilt of mine as it is a wedding gift for Tanner and Becca!  Congrats you two!

Early on in the summer I decided I wanted to make a quilt.  Then I decided making one for their wedding gift would give me a reason to actually get serious about getting a quilt done.  Becca kindly agreed they would enjoy a quilt and I asked for their wedding colors, which turned out to be browns and turquoise.  I browsed online and at stores but never really liked anything.  Then two days after being home from our Tulsa Trip, I had had enough of not sewing or finding fabric so I headed to the Fabric Patch in Ephrata...I fell in love with all the fabric and found the perfect ones for the quilt.

Now back up...I had picked out a pattern, Zig Zag Chevron Quilt, for the quilt weeks before I ever bought the fabric.  Yes, the quilt is more browns and blue but that is because none of the turquoises with the browns I had chosen made me happy.

This quilt ended up being very fun and easy to make, and I am completely in love and happy with the finished product.  If Tanner and Becca don't like it, I hope they give it back to me!

Now here are some pointers I have for making the quilt, and be sure to use the yardage, measurements, and tips given here Zig Zag Cheveron Quilt.

Lay your fabrics out in a few different orders to see which combination you like best.

Once you've cut your sewn together strips into squares that are roughly 5.25" by 5.25", lay out the WHOLE quilt.  Be sure to check that your zig zags match up and flow.

I found that sewing all the squares into pairs to start with made it easy to keep my zig zags from getting off.  To sew these pairs together, I started with the square in the lower right hand corner and sewed it to the square above it and to the left.  Once I had pairs, I sewed pairs to pairs until I had long angled strips.  Then I started in the bottom left hand corner when I sewed the long strips together.  At this point, I pinned all seams together to keep corners aligned.  I also found it helpful to sew out from the halfway point of these long strips to keep less fabric from being pushed around; this also kept my seams matched up.  To keep fabric manageable, I sewed strips together until I got to the middle of the quilt.  Next, I began sewing strips together starting in the upper right hand corner.  This way I had two halves to sew together and spent less time wrestling large amounts of fabric through and around my machine.

Preparing for quilting:  I laid out the backing with the right side against the carpet.  Then I layered the batting and quilt top on top of that.  To keep everything secure I pinned large safety pins at every bottom point of a zig zag in every other Chevron.  Start in the center of the quilt when pinning so that you can work any wrinkles out.  Also work your way out from the center when doing the quilting.  I did a really simple quilting by sewing in the ditch of every single zig zag. 

If you're not familiar with making bias tape or putting on binding, check out the Perfect Binding Tutorial.  One thing, tough, on sewing binding to the front of the quilt.  If your binding is 1/2" wide, stop sewing the binding to the quilt a 1/2" before the corner of the quilt.  If it's 3/4" wide, stop 3/4" from the corner and so on.  Please be sure not to cheat on the binding portion of your quilting project!  It is okay with me if you machine stich your binding to the quilt front, but please hand sew the binding to the back of the quilt.  It will look so much nicer if you do!  This Tutorial will get you on track to properly hand sewing the binding.

End product!

 

Sorry if something does not make sense to you.  I did not make the quilt with the intention of doing a step by step post on it; however, I enjoyed this project so much that I wanted to share it.  Please ask questions if you need something cleared up!  I'll do a better job taking some pictures during my next project...so watch for that!