Doesn't that look like fun? And it is fun! I bought a couple of jelly rolls and got to work with the first roll. Hmmm, my quilt looked significantly smaller than those in the video. Turns out the jelly rolls I had bought were half the size of those used in the video.
Not to worry. I took myself off to The Remnant Warehouse, where I was seduced by their fat quarter selection. Excellent, I thought to myself, I'll cut my own strips and make my own jelly roll!
Soon, however, I realised this was not to be. All that measuring. So I resorted to squares, which of course meant more measuring than strips, but once I realised that it was too late - most of my squares had been cut. I was very grateful for the distraction of The X-Files during those hours of cutting squares and, later, the hours of trimming seam allowances with pinking shears.
But it was kind of worth it. I soon pieced together a bright quilt for my nephew and a pink and green lap quilt for my mum:
Mum's quilt has some bonus embroidery, thanks to a slip of the shears while trimming seams:
I satin stitched over the top of the hole so it wouldn't fray, then added a number of other pink, brown and green spots so it was a 'design feature' rather than a repair.
Next step was to sew the quilt tops to their cotton wadding centres and plain cotton backings. That was done in a trice and I set to the actual quilting part, but my machine baulked at all that fabric for some reason so - you guessed it - I had to quilt them by hand. I came to yearn for a thimble after pricking my finger more times than I can count. But finally they were done and pressed and wrapped and given.
All's well that ends well.
