Made with one jelly roll! I haven't used one before and was curious to see what you could do with just one, so I odered this from Emerald City on Ebay.
The fabric is Soiree from Moda, I'd love to have some bigger pieces of some of these prints - I really love the botanical ones.
I wanted to make a Rail Fence pattern, so did a little maths to work out some possible designs, I thought of making blocks with three strips, but decided, as there were forty strips in the roll, I'd go for blocks made up of four strips.
I sewed groups of four strips together, arranging prints of similar colours, so that I had 10 wide strips. I should have been able to cut these into five 8.5" blocks, but my seams had been a little wider, so ended up cutting five blocks of 8". Fifty blocks in total. I thought of making a square quilt, 7x7, using 49 blocks, but ended up using 48, making a rectangular quilt, 6x8 blocks.
I was going to sew these into strips, but looking at other photos on flickr, I realised that it was more common to sew 4 blocks together, making bigger blocks. I think this helps to match the points, I'm pleased with my corners on this quilt anyway - I haven't unpicked anything!
Georgia helped me work out how to get the best from the Janome 1/4" patchwork foot. I found I got nice even seams - but just under 5/8". I think this was partly to do with the zigzag edges of the strips. She told me that she had sewed on some graph paper and adjusted the needle position. I hadn't thought of this as I have never used a machine where this could be adjusted. I drew some lines, I only had to move the needle to 4, from 3.5, just a tiny difference, but it seems to have done the trick.
The quilt top is 45x52"/115x132cm so far. I have no wadding and no backing fabric, so this is as far as I can get for a while.
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