KIS Quilt Week 2: Jelly Roll Race Segments!

Before we start- a few housekeeping things!

So, True Colors. It's coming, slowly. We got the notification that some of our shipment is on the way earlier this morning! We expect it will get to us early next week, and we will cut what orders we can from what we're getting. We can't make mini charm packs without the whole line, so we'll hold orders until we get the whole line and can cut them, OR, you can opt for a Denyse Schmidt Modern Solids 75pc mini charm pack instead, featuring 75 FreeSpirit solids. 

We've been told the rest will ship by July 8th, and we'll update you as we know more.

Also, we've been getting a lot of emails about lost/missing packages. We're doing our best to track them all down, and using all of our tricks to get them moving again- sometimes it works, sometimes not. (We're also missing a lot of our packages of stuff we ordered too.) We're asking for everyone's patience- the USPS is so overloaded between COVID, everyone online shopping, and their ongoing budget and staffing issues right now that it's really impacting service. We're so sorry about this, we wish we had like a package portkey or some floo powder to get them to you quickly and safely! And please, remember to thank your postal workers, they're working SO hard right now! 

Welcome back to Week 2 of the Keep it Simple Quilt Sew Along!

Now you have all of your strips and fat quarters trimmed, you're going to be making what is referred to as a "Jelly Roll Race" quilt. Well, part of one, anyways. 

These quilts, done in their entirety, are comprised of a Jelly Roll (40 or 42 2.5inxWOF strips) sewn entirely together. If you complete it all the way, it would look something like this:

(This one being made from Tula Pink's Chipper, by Lunebeam) 

But we're only going to do a portion of it. You're going to take all your strips, and sew them end to end to form a REALLY LONG strip. Then, fold them in half, pair together, and sew again. Repeat again for a width of 4 strips, and once more for a width of 8 strips. 

Here's a video that walks you through the hows of a Jelly Roll Race quilt: just remember, you're only doubling until your segments are 8 stripes tall, not doing the whole thing! (Well, you could do that too. But that'd be a different quilt.)

 If you do it exactly this way, you'll end up with the slashed seams as in her quilt. If you do it my way, simply sewing the strips end to end, you'll end up with right angles.

So here's my steps:

Sewing strips end-to-end, right sides together (RST) to make the initial strip:

Pairing the strips in half- I cut randomly on the last strip so my seams didn't match. With an even number, if you don't cut some off, all of your seams will match, and it won't look random like we'd like.

And yes, as Jennie points out, 1600 inches is a LOT of fabric to be dealing with, or so it seems! 

Then, after you pair them once, do it again:

AAAND one final time to give you 8 across.

You'll end up with a still pretty darn wide strip. Press all seams to one direction:

And that's it! You're done for the week!

This segment will be about 3x bed width, give or take. You'll use 2 segments- this will allow you to be picky about how "random" your spots are. In my case, I did end up cutting it into thirds (thereabouts) and using my two favorite sections. If you'd like, you can do this and start practicing with the final body layout, but that's next week's thing, so don't sweat it!