Friday, June 22, 2012

Jelly Roll Racing quilts?

http://www.swimbikequilt.com/2012/06/dc-baltimore-mqgs-are-jelly-roll-racing.html

What's your opinion on the Jelly Roll Race quilts?  I love the idea of sewing a bunch of random strips together and then sew, sew, sew until you have a quilt top.  But, I cannot see myself spending $40 on a jelly roll to do this.  I also only love about half the jelly roll quilts I've seen.  The other half are 'ugly'. Can you say that about a quilt?  Or is that blasphemy?

Well, check out this link and take a look at these pictures.  Someone (or a couple of someones) got the great idea to put little black squares in between the strips.  Brilliant!  It just makes the strips pop.  To me, it looks like Morse code.  I have a whole bunch of leftover binding strips that are overflowing my 2 1/2 inch strip basket and I've been wanting to do something with them.  They have now found their purpose in life.  Time to cut some 2 1/2 inch squares and get busy.

Of course, I still have that wedding quilt to bind today.  Ugh.  No migraine today please.  I can feel it coming on already :(  Yesterday's was a doozie!  The wedding is at 6pm.  I don't want to miss it.  I will be so sad.

2 comments:

Kasey said...

I agree- they're an expensive way to make an often ugly quilt. Some turn out ok, but then it's an expensive way to make a mundane quilt. I like the idea of simple strips, but I'd have to have much more intention with placement, color, etc than simply sewing strips.

Heather said...

I always love the colors in jelly rolls, but those strips are just so limiting! I have never made a jelly roll quilt yet. I would rather buy the fabrics from a jelly roll set in a FQ bundle or something so I had more leeway.

I also agree with you that many look bad. I think the problem is a lack of one sort of uniform background color to tie it all together; there;s no space for your eye to rest with all those crazy tiny pieces.

As for the jelly roll race, I am not a fan of how it looks. But I do think those black squares are a huge improvement in appearance. With the squares added it looks a lot more interesting and gives the eye somewhere to look.