Jelly Roll Rugs!

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These are some mini jelly roll rugs 🙂 A jelly roll (technically trademarked by Moda Fabrics) is a roll of 2.5″ x 44″ strips of a fabric collection, and usually has 40-ish strips. I modified the RJ Designs Jelly Roll Rug pattern to use 20 strips for each rug so they’d turn out to be doorway-ish-sized. The assembly is super easy, all the strips are sewn together, and then you fold and sew precut batting strips into the long strip of fabric. So then you have a long strip of fabric folded around batting, and swirl that around itself to make the rug. It was a bit fiddly but I used my walking foot on the machine to help guide the fabric through evenly. Apparently if you use the whole roll, or even two rolls, for one rug you can get a supersized jelly roll rug, which I might make for my living room.

The fabric line I used is called All Weather Friend by Moda Fabrics. I gave one to a couple for their wedding, and “all weather friend” describes marriage perfectly! 🙂

Tutorial here. Project completed June 18, 2019

Embroidered Wreath

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Let’s start off with an old project – hand embroidery was what started my journey towards quilting, in a roundabout way. 🙂 This is a project I made for my mom for her office. I used Namaste Embroidery’s tutorial for double hoops to make the wreath shape. I had done some simple embroidery before, but this was my first project that I planned out by myself (with PowerPoint!). I wanted to use different kinds of stitches to make petals and create different shapes, and link them with little baby flowers and leaves.

Modified lazy daisy stitch petals with wagon wheel centers and fishbone stitch leaves

I used stitches I had done before but in different ways – a lazy daisy stitch is usually used as a line or small petals with a common center (see off to the right, those light green petals and dark green stem are also lazy daisy stitch). I wanted to make bigger petals that were reminiscent of sunflowers, so I made the lazy daisy into more of a triangle shape. The wagon wheel is always a great flower center, and I stitched it by putting different colored strands together to make a new thread.

Elongated pistil stitch petals with french knot centers and fishbone leaves

I really like the look of pistil stitch, and I varied the number of french knots on the end throughout the petals. French knots have great texture and I liked using them in two different ways on these flowers.

Satin stitch petals with pistil stitch and fishbone leaves

I like these flowers, but it was my first real usage of satin stitch. I think if I did it again, I’d use lazy daisy stitch or even backstitching with a larger thread size to fill in the space. It ended up being tedious, but it turned out nice.

Self-drafted design

Project completed March 2, 2018