Work In Progress Wednesday: Jelly Roll Jam

There hasn't been much sewing going on here lately, or at least nothing that's far enough along to post about, seeing as I've been sick on and off for the past couple of weeks and haven't been up to doing much of anything besides going to work and vegging on the couch at home. But with Thanksgiving looming next week, and a trip to Iowa planned for the weekend, I decided that it was time I got my butt into gear and whipped up a quilt for Kevin's Grandma to take to Iowa with us.

I was originally planning on using a Honeysweet charm pack by Fig Tree & Co. and a couple other pieces from my stash, but after cutting all the Honeysweet squares into cute little HST I realized that unless I was planning on it being about the size of a postage stamp, the pattern I was using just wasn't going to work. Apparently neither Kevin or I bothered to actually read the part about the final dimensions of the quilt. Oops!

So I went back to my stash and found a Honeydew jellie by Fabric Central that I had been saving with plans to use it to make a little lap quilt for myself for the office. Luckily when I had bought it I had the forethought to buy two, so I didn't mind using one for this project. I've been wanting to try the Jelly Roll Jam pattern from Fat Quarter Shop for a while, and figured that this would be the perfect opportunity to give it a try. I'd already watched the video tutorial for the pattern so I had a pretty good idea of how straight forward the piecing and construction is. I pieced and subcut the three sets of six strips on Monday evening, and then moved on to piecing, basting, and starting to quilt last night.

I really need some better lighting in my house!

Or maybe I just need to quit taking all of my pictures at night.

I love how bright and playful these colors are. It may almost be winter, but these colors make me think of summer :o)

I decided to go with a quilt pattern that would compliment all the vertical and horizontal lines of the quilt top but would still stand out, and settled on going with a simple diagonal straight stitch (sorry, no pictures of that yet).

So, my plans tonight are to finish quilting the top and machine stitch the binding, and maybe (if I'm lucky) start on the hand-stitching portion of the binding so that I can finish it up tomorrow and Friday. Phew, I'm sensing some very sore fingers by the end of the week!