Jelly Roll Wrong!

Yesterday was the first workshop that I attended for the sewing group I joined.  Had a blast.  Helping those who had very little experience was most enjoyable.  To see someone who had never sat down at a sewing machine flower into a quilt top maker by the end of the day was impressive.  A great group of gals….informal sewing fun!

The sun has risen, but it is wet and not suitable for pictures.  However, snapping a few indoor photos for blogging is a good thing!  Pictured below is my fail of execution.

We pieced the jelly roll race quilt.  I had never done one.  I sought out 2 jelly rolls because one was too small.  I did the calculations on the net and I would have been an inch shy of making a 74 X 96 quilt.  So I found matching fabric and proceeded to add 4 strips for a total of 89 strips.  The size ended up being a very long long quilt top.  Long story short, I ended up running the strips the opposite way and wacking off about 20 inches.  I will move that to the back.

All of my strips were solids except the 4 I added.  I had a jelly roll of all white.  When I originally sewed them together following the directions gave I sewed the selvage ends together in the precut package as they were unrolled.  These were blues, purples, greens.  Then I sewed end to end the white set, and then the printed 4 strips.  When I started assembling the quilt, it ended up have two rows of colors together and then 2 rolls of whites together.  Not what I had envisioned, but a very modern look.  When I got home I ironed it ( love my iron, see that post here), and also added the sashing to make it just a tad wider and longer after wacking it to a smaller size.  I also saved all my dog ears, which will make lovely half square triangles that perhaps will make the back too.  I already am planing to feather the dickens out of this quilt.

I do not consider myself a novice at sewing and crafting because I have done it for so long.  When the lady who taught the class came around, she took a picture of the long, long quilt top….it made me laugh out loud such that it made her really laugh.  It was good to laugh at my execution error.  Right now I am calling this Jelly Roll Wrong (which when you say it out loud sounds like you are speaking chinese), but will probably change that up a bit after I add the feathers in the quilting, kind of like I am flipping the bird to my execution error.

There were many lovely jelly roll race quilts made yesterday for charity.  My plan was to finish one of those as well, but because I took on double the work and helped those around me that needed help, I did not get to it.  I hope there will be a next time.

Take aways yesterday:

• I need to get out more often and do these kind of social things
• helping those with a lower skill set was very enjoyable (even lending out my extension cord brought me joy because I helped a complete stranger…something we American’s are too scared to do)
• bad executions are still salvageable
• there are still good people out there
• The key people in our group who made this happen, they are magic makers
• Laugh out loud at yourself makes others laugh and then you are not alone

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