A Finish and a WiP

Last night I finished a quilt I started in February!  I decided I wanted to make a Jelly Roll Race quilt, so I watched this video from Missouri Star Quilt Company to see how it was done.  I bought a jelly roll of Road 15 by Sweetwater for Moda and I thought it might make a fun quilt for my youngest son who turned 30 yesterday.  I loved many of the fabrics because they made me think of the small town in Kansas where he lives, and also the trip he is taking next week to Las Vegas for the Star Trek Convention.  He is so excited!

 

 

 

It has been really fun to look at all the fabrics in this line as I stitched them together!  Since it was February when I made the basic quilt itself, I couldn't take it outside to lay out all 1600 (or however many it is!) inches when they were sewn together end to end, so I had to run up and down the stairs with all it night long!  I told my friends at work the next day that I now have proof that quilting is an aerobic activity! 

 



 

Unfortunately, I think I missed one important part of the video in my haste to sew all the strips together:  I forgot to cut off part of the very first strip to offset the seams.  That caused me to end up with a lot of seams close together in rows that touch.  Probably not a huge mistake, but noticeable to people who have made this quilt before!

 

 

I decided to add a border to make the quilt bigger for my son, so I used a gray solid.  I backed and bound it in a marbled dark gray fabric I found at Hobby Lobby.  I liked the way my quilting showed up on the dark gray on the back and the way it framed the lighter gray solid on the front.

 

 

 

In spite of my mistakes, I really do like how this quilt turned out, and I hope he will, too!  I'll be seeing him next week to give it to him.

 

This week, I also got started on some orange peels so that I can quilt along with Jessica of Quilty Habit!  They were fun to make, and I'm loving how they look.  My plan is to make a table topper wiith them, and I think they're going to work great for that purpose.

 

 

 

The backgrounds are 5 inch squares cut from my Low Volume stash that I have been collecting recently, and the orange peels are from a fat quarter stack that a friend gave me last fall for my birthday, a fabric line called Mimi by Chez Moi for Moda.  They are beautiful larger florals in greens, pinks, oranges, and teal.  Fun to sew with!  Can't wait to put the whole thing together and see how it turns out!

 





Linking up with Sew Cute Tuesday and Needle and Thread Thursday this week!