Jellyroll Finish

I finished my 2014 Jellyroll quilt a few days ago. the top shot has it on the floor and below is over the back of the couch where it will live from Memorial Day until Labor day. Well at least until sometime in July or August when we will be moving and then I'm not sure where it will live for the summer months when I usually put out all my red, white and blue quilts because all the summer holidays are patriotic.



These next 4 photos show some of the steps for attaching my binding by machine. Not shown are the first 2 steps where I press from the front first, pressing away from the body of the quilt and then I turn it over and fold the binding down to cover the stitches and press again. Shown below, I trim away the ravelings on the edge and clean it up with a lint roller , then I insert a 1/4 inch strip of Wonder-under or  Stitch Witchery and press the binding over the fusible strip making sure the stitches are covered. I either stitch in the ditch from the front with a straight stitch or use the Bernina #4 stitch right on the inside edge of the binding; that is what I did here. I quilted with red, white and blue thread using the wavy lines in both directions.

Fixing the Jellyroll Race Flimsy

I cleaned up my sewing room on Saturday and all  horizontal surfaces were bare, yes, BARE. I found creative places to stash things so they are out of the way awaiting decisions of what to keep and what has to go.
The next order of business is to finish up some things so they are not sitting around in an unfinished state taking up space on recently cleaned horizontal surfaces.
Right after the Jellyroll Race I said I was not going to fix anything but today I decided on one quick fix, only one.
The left shot below shows flimsy before the fix the place where I took the rows apart where too much white/light came together.  On the right you can see where I turned the bottom section around and sewed it back on to break up that large light patch.

 

The photos below show a side view of almost the entire flimsy; before is on the left and after is on the right. As usual, I am having second thoughts; however I am not going to fuss around with any more changes. I am going to sew 2 1/2 inch striped strips (the same stripe as the spacers)on the top and bottom edges. I want to make it just a little bit longer and I will use the same stripe, cut on the bias, for the binding.

Today we took a ride through the Metropark system to an area near Akron where there is a Blue Heron nesting site. There are over 50 occupied nest and it looks like they are awaiting the hatching of the babies.  We made a stop at The Polkadot Pincushion quilt shop and then it was about time to eat so we stopped for supper before heading toward home. We made one more stop, at Joann's, where I got batting for the Jellyroll quilt  and one or two other WIP's that have been waiting to be finished.

It was a good day.

 

 
 

A Jellyroll Race.

Yesterday was the annual Basement Divas' annual Jellyroll Race. this was our third race and the most fun yet. The quilts were better this year too
I am always slow and came in dead  last in 2013 and 2012 I came in next to last only because the last place person had a problem with her machine. So.... this year I cheated  I claimed a handicap and sewed 2/3 of my first seam at home. I did tell 2 people before the race just to keep things on the up and up. Even so, I did not come in first but second.

My second place quilt.

  Everyone had a good time. There were snacks, 2 short term power outages, dance breaks, an over the top lunch (as usual)and a lot of laughing and fun. and There were also prizes for everyone.  Everyone received a participant patch, made by Lori signed by everyone there, and a goodie bag made and filled by Judy with a Twinkie, Hershey's miniatures and a bag of snack chips. I was going to take a picture of the contents after I got home but they had disappeared before I got around to it. Jack enjoyed the snack. He has not been eating sweets since January so it was a really special treat.




Photo here shows my empty goodie bag and my other prizes. A 1 1/4 yard and a quarter piece of Alexander Henry fabric with giraffes and rhinos and some of Lori's little left over HSTs.


Below is a shot of the whole group with our quilts. Mary Ann has only her unsewn Jellyroll because her machine refused to sew yesterday.



Participants in the Annual Basement Divas 2014

 Everyone needs fun times like this and I am so happy to be part of this fun group of great friends.

2 Finishes

 I was almost finished with this the other day but I was contemplating what to do with the hexagons. I decided to quilt across them in 2 directions. Here is a picture showing the quilting. It is enough! My previous post shows the whole  table topper.







I got the 2013 Diva Jellyroll Race quilt layered up last Saturday and I  finished it up yesterday with Kona Bone for the binding.

On the right is a  close up showing the wavy line grid quilting. Quilting across was  easy; I just stayed between the seam lines. Length wise, I had to mark lines 2 inches apart to stay between. I knew I would end up with my seams drifting off to one side as I went along.  I started with masking tape which didn't work  too well. then I tried my old pizza cutter/pseudo Hera marker and it didn't show up very well. I think it works better with Warm and Natural batting. I went out and bought a Sewline mechanical pencil and ended up not using that for this either. I just marked with blackboard chalk in the end as I didn't need a fine line only guidelines to sew between.

I like the Sewline markers and I used both the white chalk mechanical pencil and the air/water erasable one, that I bought last week, to mark my straight lines through the hexagons. Maybe with my new markers I will  get back to doing some work  on MY BIG UFO.  I have not done anything with it since the day after our commitment meeting 2 months ago.

 

 

Snow Days

It is cold and snowing here again today in NE Ohio. We stayed in yesterday and are not going out again today. I just rattled around yesterday not doing much of anything and Jack spent the whole day shredding papers, bank statements and other like stuff that he had kept until he couldn't shut the drawer in his dresser. There are 5 bags of shredded paper to take to the paper collection dumpster at our church along with several bags of magazines and papers that I got together to take.

 

Today I did a little bit of sewing. I took apart my Jelly roll race quilt in 2 areas that bothered me because they were too bland the way the light and plain fabrics clumped together.

This photo was  taken Saturday right after we finished. You can see two areas that bothered me. 


Rearranged version

I took out a couple of seams and inserted about 5 rows that I had taken out in the middle of six bland rows that I took apart on one end. On the other end I took out 3 rows and added them to the end where I had already turned one section around. I  inserted a red strip where I had removed those rows.  I think that is what I did. I have a bunch of photos but I can't quite make out exactly how I rearranged things. I guess it is better but one end seems to have one big area of more pattern while the other end is more bland.




It is going to stay this way. I will quilt it and put a red binding on it and I will like it well enough. Jellyroll quilts are really fun to make for the race. No one expects them to be a masterpiece. Maybe Judy, our first place Diva will have a masterpiece; she has cut her quilt top up into Diamonds.


This is the other thing I did today. I found a little pack of pieces that were supposed to be for  3 different 6 inch blocks of the same fabrics. I am not sure if these were left over pieces from putting the packs together or what. The strips for the  churn dash blocks were not long enough and there seemed to be parts missing. I put together these from what was in there and I will  put them with like blocks in our church closet and maybe someday one of us will put another baby quilt together using them. That was the idea when I put the packs together but we have only put together 2 or 3 of these quilts.

I have a lot of things I could  be doing but I don't have backs for things that are ready to layer up and as Iam not going to venture out today they will have to wait.

Maybe I will have several "15 minutes of play" session and  make some fabric.

Jellyroll quilt

This is not a mistake!  I am piecing a panel for the back of my Jellyroll quilt in order to make it wide enough. I made 4 -12 inch blocks and after I put them together with the setting triangles I realized it was longer than the quilt. I had 2 of the side setting  triangles left from cutting 2 large squares into quarters and I cut them to use on the end corners. I  knew was going to cut through the last blocks on either end and add a plain strip in order to have it look like it fit right I planned it that way.  These triangles would not have been large enough to sew on along the bias edges if I had not intended  to cut the ends off the blocks. Here it is on the right with the block trimmed and a straight piece

added.













I am ready to split the backing and add the panel and  then I can layer up the quilt and start quilting. It looks rippled here and I am hope that will  all quilt out.

I found this  yellow and white fabric yesterday at Joann's for the back. I went to get needles and batting and decided to have a look at the yellow  fabrics. This has a nice weight and a nice hand to it and at 40% off it is a winner. I like the way the blocks blend into it. I bought the Central Park prints (orange print and the yellow with purple and orange) last week at the quilt shop but there was only about 3/4 yard left on the bolt of each of them. I had no plans for it but I was ready to buy something bright and cheerful

Sometime things work out just right. I hope those ripples do.