quirky granola girl: jelly roll

This quilt started as a first attempt at a quilt tutorial. It was my very first jelly roll I ever bought and my first precut quilt. It also was planned to be a throw quilt for my mom. (This picture is from February of last year at our old house in Wisconsin.)

Now we live in Maryland. I made a much better tutorial for the Four Corners Quilt and it looked even better after it was quilted. (Both posts have more photos in our old backyard.) And, after discussing it with my mom, we both decided that this quilt was meant to go live with my aunt instead.

I did simple diagonal lines quilting and marked the lines with my Hera marker (I love that tool).

I used a thrifted sheet for the backing so it has a nice smooth hand.

And, I have another UFO from last year done! Four finished projects since the beginning of the year is a pretty good start (but I did start with a goal of 19 old projects from the last two years...)

The idea for this quilt tutorial came from one I made in February--the Four Corners Quilt. I attempted a tutorial at that time, but it wasn't pretty. So, here I go again, aiming to do better.

First, I must point you to the link for jelly roll race quilt video. That is where I started from.

Four Corners Quilt Tutorial -- the quilt will finish at about 56" square.

Start with one jelly roll and one 8 inch square block of coordinating fabric. Rearrange the jelly roll strips randomly. Sew the strips end to end until you have one super super long strip.

Cut 15" off of one end of your crazy long strip of fabric. Place the two ends of the strip, right sides together and sew a 1/4" seam all the way down the length until you are 4" from the end. Snip your super long strip in half at this point and then continue your seam to the very end and cut your thread.

Now take your two-strips-wide piece and place the two ends together, right sides facing and, again, sew a 1/4" seam for the full length stopping 4" before the end to cut it in half again. Complete the seam.

Keep sewing like this until you have a piece of sewn fabric that is 16 strips wide. (The photo below is 8 strips wide.) As you keep sewing the strips together, keep in mind that pooling color works well for this pattern.

Press all seams until they lie flat on your 16 strip wide piece of fabric.

Cut your 16 strip piece in four equal sections. Trim the edges of each piece until you have four pieces that are 25" wide.

Now measure the length of your sections. If you have perfect 1/4" seams for your 16 strips, your fabric piece will be 32 ½" wide. Mine, however measures 32 inches. This measurement is very important, so do this step carefully.

Since the center square is inset and we don't want to trim any fabric at the end, we have to carefully calculate the exact size of the square.

          For a section measuring: 32 ½", cut an 8" square.
                                               32 ¼", cut a 7 ¾" square.
                                               32", cut a 7 ½" square.
                                               31 ¾", cut a 7 ¼" square.
                                               31 ½", cut a 7" square.
                                               31 ¼", cut a 6 ¾" square.
                                   31", cut a 6 ½" square.

My sections are 32" long, so my center square will be 7 ½".