I have finally finished the first of the two “Jelly Roll” baby quilts I’ve been working on. Not being very practiced at machine quilting, I kept putting it off. But the deadline for at least one finished baby quilt was looming, so I took a deep breath and sat down at my machine on Saturday and did some simple straight line quilting. It is definitely nice to have a walking foot. I also discovered a quilt-look stitch on my machine but didn’t have the right thread to make it look exactly as it should, but it’s fine.
Once quilted it sat for several days while I tried to find the binding strips I set aside when I cut the backing. Do you think I could find them? NO! I’ve looked everywhere. I can only imagine that I must have somehow accidentally thrown them away. But I also imagine they’ll turn up AFTER both quilts are finished.
So, I had to figure out what to use for binding. I had lots of end pieces of Jelly Roll strips left over from the tops so I decided to piece them together. I had EXACTLY enough to make binding for one quilt. By exactly, I mean there was only enough at each end to turn under for finishing. But I think it made a cuter binding than the plain peach fabric would have. The quilt is now finished and I like the way it turned out. The pattern is Pandora’s Box from Jelly Roll Quilts by Pam and Nicky Lintott.
This one will be displayed in our local quilt guild show this weekend, then sent off to the Jackson Feild Home, a residence facility/school for girls that also has a program for teenage moms. They are our charity quilt recipients for this year. Each member of the guild was asked to make at least one baby quilt for the project, so there will be several.
I’m saving the other top I made with this jelly roll to quilt after I’ve been through a machine quilting workshop our quilt guild is having in October. I’d like to be able to do free motion quilting on it. I’ll have to figure out something different for the binding, though. Unless those wayward strips turn up.
Now on to some hotpads for the quilt show sale!
