Jelly Roll 1600+

The Jelly Roll 1600+ went well although it was interrupted frequently.  Not that I don't want to talk on the phone with family or visit with friends, it's just that I didn't get as much done yesterday as I had planned.

I did keep track of the actual time spent so I could report back.

 

It took approximately 50 minutes to sew all 50 strips of fabric together, mitering ends of strips as you do for binding, snipping threads, trimming selvedges and corners, and pressing seams open.

 

Things went smoothly... no surprises.

After cutting off 18" of one end of the very long fabric strip...

 

...the jelly roll 1600+ began!

The first lap took 32 minutes total... fairly easy to do.

The second lap took 21 minutes... mostly because I had to unfold the two sewn-together strips all the time... which slowed me down.

The third lap took 10 minutes... even though I had to open up fabrics, it was much easier with four strips sewn together rather than two.

The fourth lap took 5 minutes and...

...the fifth lap took 3 minutes... totaling 71 minutes or 1 hour, 10 minutes.

Things I learned:

Adding fabric strips does not make the quilt top longer... only wider.  The quilt top turned out to be 60"x64" instead of 48"x64".  I don't want an almost-square quilt so I cut off 10" off one side to make the flimsy 50"x64".  (More on this later.)

If you want a focus fabric (in this case, the fish fabric), a jelly roll 1600 isn't the best way to go about it.  It would be better to sew the strips with attention to where the focus fabric is placed.  

If you noticed, I have a "trout pond" at the top of the quilt flimsy.   I'm thinking of unsewing one seam and adding some of the "trout pond" to the bottom of the flimsy where there are fewer fish.

Stay tuned for more adventures at Fish Camp Trout Pond!

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For complete instructions about how to make a Jelly Roll 1600 quilt top, visit Heritage Creations.