More holiday crafting

Although I obviously did my holiday crafting in advance of the holidays, I didn’t want to post this until after my gifts had been given. 

Our family is very much a dog-family… sometimes I wonder what we’d all talk about if it weren’t for the silly, funny, annoying, and cute things all of our dogs do.  Of course this also means that the dogs all get holiday gifts (even when the people decide not to exchange gifts…)

This year for all five of the dogs in our extended family (two belong with one uncle and aunt, and another with a different uncle and aunt, and then two more are mine…) I made super-soft, cute and cuddly flannel blankets.  We won a similar blanket two years back at a dog event, and it has become a favorite of our dogs (which is a bit of a pain, since there is one blanket and two dogs…) plus it’s heavy enough that my play-centric dog doesn’t bring it out to shake nearly as much as he does with the fleece ones.

Front and reverse of the blue blanket

For my dogs and the one only-child dog I made grey and black blankets, while for the other two I made blue ones with more of a holiday theme.  I figured that even if they don’t go with home decor, they would still make good car blankets to reduce the amount of dog hair on the car seats.

One side of the blanket is smooth, while the other is fluffy – caused by the fraying of the fabric in the washer. The blankets are also really soft and warm. I’m actually HOPING to make something similar for myself, (In a larger version of course!)  and apparently these blankets are great for babies because they love to grab onto the texture of the fluffy side.

Inspiration at Creative Stitches

Poppies

As I mentioned in a previous post, I attended this year’s Creative Stitches & Crafting Alive! trade show – and I’ve already discussed some other elements of the show, but there were a few other photos I didn’t have a chance to share, that I thought I’d toss up for inspirations sake.

Three-dimensional poppy wall-hanging from Veronica’s Sewing Supplies which I really liked – though I didn’t end up getting the pattern or the kit.  I had already picked up a few other things, and I was trying to show some restraint with ‘new projects’. (Since I already have so many on the go…)

Elk

I think that this pretty Elk pattern was from The Sugar Pine Company (located in Canmore) although I could be wrong…

Elk

This one is called Monarch of the Valley, and it is of an elk – they also had a bear, a buffalo, and another elk as well.  (Click here for a shop selling this pattern – no recommendation intended – just one I found online since the Sugar Pine Co. didn’t seem to have it on theirs.)  I liked this mostly because of the black outlines around the element – I am guessing that several of the pattern pieces is cut out of black and then the fabric – with then the fabric cut slightly narrower – so that when layered on top of the black, an outline of black shows around each of those selected elements.

In Carola’s class on texture, she also brought out starfish, and the example below. Time was running short when we were in the workshop, so I didn’t get the chance to see it up close, but instead saw it in her booth later on.
The starfish were each sewn, slashed and stuffed, the quilting was done on “ugly” (her words) hand-dyed fabric resembling mucky water along the shoreline, and turned-and-stuffed pebbles as well.
The seaweed in this piece was made the same way she made the moss in the texture example art quilt that we spent the most time on in the workshop itself.  (By stitching with quilt-weight thread on several layers of wash-away stabilizer in a repeated pattern to build up the thread before washing out the stabilizer and then attaching the ‘seaweed’.

Starfish

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Steampunk hat

In the scrapbook area, there was a shop booth that had this awesome steampunk mannequin – made almost entirely from paper-crafting supplies! The outfit included a corset and bustle skirt, but what I really liked was the hat!

Steampunk hat

Decorated with gears, flowers, and goggle,s what I really loved about the hat was the huge scrapbook chipboard ‘clock’.

cogs

I found cogs similar to the chipboard clock…

clock faces

… and then also found the clock too.  Such a cool idea I’d love to try to replicate it – but… eh. I didn’t bother picking this up, again trying to show some restraint in the new-project-file.  I have so many projects on the go – including hats… that I didn’t want to add this – especially since the chipwood would restrict the wearing of the hat – being paper and all.  Plus, I think I know where I can get the chipboard clock faces (or the cogs if I wanted to go that way instead…) if I decide to attempt to do something similar in the future.

So.. that’s pretty much it in terms of the inspiration from the Creative Stitches show – and the last post I’ll have for the show (at least for this year!)

So… feeling inspired means I should have some completed projects to post at some time.. right?

Quilt examples at Creative Stitches

So earlier I wrote about the Creative Stitches & Crafting Alive! trade show in mid/late October and some general thoughts.  I then showed off some of the examples from one of the workshops I attended.

I didn’t mention that there were also two displays at the show of completed quilts in a sort of competition/exhibition.  One was all full-sized quilts (with a theme of patriotism or military or Canadiana I’m not sure exactly…) and I’ll admit that I wasn’t especially inspired by them, so I didn’t take any photos.  The other was more of an art-inspired, textile exhibition.  I found some of them really nice, and took a few photos.

Leaves

Leaves

Leaves

Like the Sunflower quilt that Carola showed us – this one was most likely made by discharge (bleach).  I think that the artist/quilter started off by custom-dying the background fabric in the gradation from green to yellow to orange to rust, and then used a stamp or something to bleach out a few leaves “falling” down to the ground.

Notable is that the leaves do vary in size, but the largest leaves are near the bottom while the smaller ones are towards the top.  This gives the impression of distance.  The boldest quilting seems to be a wind blowing down, while the background filler quilting is geometric.

This quilt is called “Blown into my yard III” and is by Margie Davidson from Edmonton, Alberta.

She writes ” Having grown up in Ontario the memory of vivid red and orange maple leaves is a part of me. Maple leaves are my favorite leaves to sunprint with when I am painting fabric. But a maple tree is rare here in Alberta where I have lived for half my life. I seek them out.  My neighbor has one. The next closest, a silver maple is 20 blocks away. I am always delighted when the maple leaves from that neighbor’s tree are blown into my yard.”

(I suppose that means that rather than discharge, this is a sunprint?)

Crows

Crows

The next quilt is called Crows and Crabapples and is by Emilie Belak from Grand Forks, BC.

She writes “A crabapple tree in front of the dining room provides beauty and entertainment year round. the crows occupy a linden tree by the compost bin watching for the daily scraps. Combining these two seemed like fun. Crows are definitely not unique to British Columbia and you might have multitudes of your own. Let my crows span the distance gap from west to east and bring you smiles and cheer.” 

Crows

I like the imagery of the crows, and the bright pops of red along with the dark brown branches and dark birds is very bold against the varied blues of the background.  I really like the background itself too – it looks so subtle from a distance, but up close you can see that it is loads of little rectangles all lined up and appliqued (fused) and stitched down to the background to create one layer of quilting on top of which the applique is added.

Shoreline

Lakeside

The next quilt I really like, but can’t even imagine reproducing in any way – it is called “Kanaka Creek Sunset” and it is by Vivian Kapusta from Maple Ridge in BC.

She writes “Kanaka Creek is named for the Hawaiians who worked across the Fraser River at Fort Langley.  The pilings were used at the turn of the century to tie up log booms by the Abernathy and Lougheed Railway & Logging Co. The Kanaka Park is one of my favorite walks along the banks of the Fraser.”

With the lighting in the room I wasn’t able to get as good of a shot of this as I would have liked to really represent what it looked like.  Basically it seemed as though the quilt was as much a quilt as it was painting with thread.  The sunset in particular was really well done (and really blown out in the photo so you can’t really see it at all… ) with all of the yellow threads coming from the ‘sun’ in the centre.

Looking at the details- it also looked like the fabric was more dyed and painted than pieced, which was kind of cool, and an interesting way to reproduce the image.

Milky Way

The final quilt that I really liked and took a photo of (there were many more quilts than just this, but only a few that I really liked) is called Too Far Away by Pat Findlay from Winnipeg, Manitoba.

The exhibition was put on by the Fiber Art Network of Western Canada, and represented artists/quilters from Manitoba, Alberta, Saskatchewan, British Columbia, Yukon and the Northwest Territories.

Milky Way

About Too Far Away, Pat writes “…In this piece I have focused on the most obvious image in the night sky – the Milky Way – and one image that is seen in the same way throughout the world.  I have futhur tried to include many generations of man, by including the oldest religious symbol know – the triple spiral, which has been adopted and used by many belief systems in our history.” 

The triple spiral is used in the background quilting of the piece, and in addition to beading the piece extensively (I would suggest that the beading is creating the “art” of the piece much more so than the quilting…)  the artist also used silver paint to expand the “milky way’ around from just the beads.

The eye is really drawn to the one very large glass piece which is not a bead I suppose – as it is sort of couched onto the quilt with silver threads, and framed in small white beads (possibly hiding the base of the silver threads?) Some of the larger white circles might also be buttons instead of beads, since they seem to be flat.  This is actually something that I think would be a lot of fun to try to reproduce.  It sure would be fun to collect all of the beads!

Milky Way

Shopping at Creative Stitches

So earlier I wrote about the Creative Stitches & Crafting Alive! trade show in mid/late October.  I didn’t include my shopping in that post because it was already getting pretty lengthy – so I figured that I would include some of the photos here.

Steamtrunk Craftworks

skulls

One of the first shops I stopped at was Steampunk Craftworks, from Surrey BC. Here I picked up a bunch of skull beads (to add to the collection of skull beads?).  Oddly enough, the beads at the show were $.83 for the large ones (in a set of three) and $.50 for the small ones (in a set of five).  On their website, the large ones are $.93 (in a set of seven) and $.65 for the small ones (in a set of ten). So… I guess I got a good deal?

I also got  some skull and crossbone ribbon (also a collection?) which is black with silver (and a white outline) I don’t love that the skulls go right-side-up and upside-down, but I’m sure I can find something to do with it!

Finally I also got some satin leaf ribbon in green and brown. This is the kind that is shaped and basically created by heat-cutting the shape, so you get a great shape, that doesn’t fray or need to be hemmed in any way. I saw this becoming something like a hair wreath or something.   (The photo below isn’t great – but you get the idea of what it looks like… )

leaf ribbon

Sugar Pine Quilt Company

grey flannelette

The next shop I went to was a quilt shop called The Quilt Patch where I first saw a few very simple flannelette quilt that I really liked the colours of.   (Dark blues, greens and greys with black sashing.) They had a package of the decorative fabrics (not the black for the sashing) in a multi-pack.

I made a note of the multi-pack to go back later if I didn’t find anything better in that theme – and did go back near the end of the day – but when I got there I saw a pile of greys instead, which I thought would go a lot better with the grey flannelette that I had bought the previous weekend.  But…. I’m not sure if it will.

I figure that if it doesn’t match (I haven’t actually checked yet at the point of writing this…) that maybe I could just go with the pack as it is – and then add in the black for the sashing, and perhaps a highlight/contrast/pop of colour.  I thought red would be nice, but then as I was heading to the cash register, I saw a multi-pack of plums, and although the fabric itself was wrong (quilting cottons instead of flannelette) I thought that the colour would be great.

Again, the photo isn’t fantastic, but it gives at least an idea of the colour I am thinking of, and a general idea of how they might look together.  So… now it’s just a matter of first – finding the grey flannelette that I bought up in Edmonton and see how these would work with it – and after that… seeing if I can find any plum flannelette instead!

possibly plum?

Scrapbooking shop

lantern

Lantern

For this next item, I’m not actually sure of the name of the shop I got it in – they didn’t give me a receipt or a bag, and their price sticker doesn’t have a shop name either.  I think it MIGHT have been The Paper Box – but their website is only a blog.. which doesn’t help either.

This is a tiny lantern from the Tim Holtz collection.

I’m actually a bit disappointed in this one… I don’t quite know what I thought it was in the package – but I didn’t see the electrical cord, and thought that the battery for this tiny little lantern would be like a watch battery, and that the on-off switch was hidden by the way the lantern was packaged.  (Need a better photo? Here it is on a shop site.)

Instead, it has a brown cord which runs to a double-A battery pack.  A very large and cumbersome battery pack.  Which is incredibly hard to open (it doesn’t have a latch, rather the two pieces are just shoved together, and thus need to be pried apart with a butter knife…) and worse still – the battery pack doesn’t have an off-on switch! According to this website – the light will glow for about three days if left on.

I had hoped to do something interesting with this – but with the ugly battery pack, and the annoying cord, and the lack of on-off switch, I really can’t see me using this in the way I had hoped.  So, now to either adapt my idea and plow forth anyways – or to find an entirely different use for this all together.

Bears & Bedtime

nose

The final item I picked up was just a plain teddy bear nose from Bears & Bedtime – this felt like a somewhat silly purchase, weighing in with tax at $.26, but there was nothing else there that I needed or wanted.  (I did take a look at a pattern for needle felting, but it wasn’t needed..) This is HOPEFULLY going to be used in a project I have upcoming – though I haven’t done anything else to start on the project, other than get it started in the research, planning, sketching and inspiration phases…

… and you?

If you attended the show, what did you buy? What workshops did you attend?

Texture with Textiles – Black background quilt

Black-background quilt

This is another of the examples shown in the Texture with Textiles session I attended on October 19 at the Creative Stitches show. The session was led by Carola from Carola’s Quilt Shop.

Black-base quilt

This is another wall-hanging/art quilt that the instructor showed us. The only real technique that she talked about with this was placing the top fabrics on the background to “audition” them by ironing them (no adhesives needed) because often the static or whatever will very temporarily ‘bond’ the fabrics together.

Black-base quilt

Black-base quilt

She also mentioned that she rarely hand-stitches, and all of the applique on the quilt is done by machine as is the quilting in the borders, and only the long basting stitches were done by hand.

Inspired?

Texture with Textiles – Sunflower quilt

Sunflower quilt

Another example of a quilt show off in the Texture with Textiles session at the October 19th Creative Stitches show.

Sunflower quilt

Carola showed off this sample, which was taught by one of the students in one of her shop classes back in Gibons.

Sunflower quilt

She talked about how the student/instructor had them all trace the sunflower design onto the white fabric which would be the backing fabric – simply because it is a lot easier to see the design through the white fabric than through the dark face fabric.

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Sunflower quilt

Once the sunflower was ‘drawn’ on with thread, (it must have also been sandwiched with batting as well) they took bleach pens to remove the colour from the top fabric (a dark green) and then they painted back in the yellows of the sunflower and the lighter green of the leaves.  The centre of the sunflower was painted with browns, and then heavily beaded with brown/copper/etc beads.

As an art quilt – this looks like so  much fun!

Texture with Textiles

In an earlier post I mentioned the workshop I took at the Creative Stitches & Crafting Alive! show called Texture with Textiles. Since there were a lot of photos (to help me remember some of what was illustrated techniques were) I decided to make up  posts just for the session. This session was taught by Carola from Carola’s Quilt shop in Gibsons, BC, and she started the session with a landscape quilt she made from one of her classes in her shop.  She also showed off a number of other projects and talked a bit about each, and the different techniques she used to make them.

Landscape quilt – background and elements

Landscape quilt

It’s not a great photo – but basically there are six layers to the landscape – with a large yellow sun and a tree over the sun – and then a stream of leaves blowing off the tree and across the landscape.  The sky is heavily beaded, and other parts of the quilt are also embellished a great deal.

Landscape quilt

The instructor had a really great technique to make the curved seams of the landscape. Basically with the curves, you would have to baste the curve seam allowance, press under the seam allowance, remove the basting stitch, and then top-stitch/applique the fabric down. The instructor’s method was sort of the same steps – just getting twice as much done at once!

1. First, get two fabrics (they don’t even have to be the ones that will be side-by-side) and put them right-sides-together, sewing a gentle curving line at least 1/4″ away from one edge.  Use wash-away thread in the bobbin for this (that part is really important…).
2. Trim the seam allowance to 1/4″ inch.
3. Press the seam using a completely dry iron.
4. Turn the fabrics right-side-out (so it’s a two-sided thing with one straight edge and one curved edge.
5. Press the seam using a dry iron.
6. THEN.. once the seam is pressed, press again with a steam iron – this will dissolve the wash-away thread.  The result – two fabrics with their curves pressed under in one step!

Landscape quilt leaf

Across the sky (coming from the sun, under the branches of the tree, and into the sky) was an orange silk ribbon swirl, which on the sky was beaded and sequined (though it wasn’t on the sun area).

Leaves

The three-dimensional leaf – the centre “vein” sewn about half to 2/3 up. The leaves on the tree were made double-sided by fusing two different leaf-coloured fabrics together.  The edges weren’t sewn at all- so this isn’t a technique to use with something that will be washed. She illustrated how she made the leaves as well, making them three-dimensional by stitching a seam down the centre of the leaf, but not all the way.  This way the leaves could lay flat, curl, fold, etc…  She also talked about using a very fine polyester thread (rather than monofilament nylon thread) as  (nearly) ‘invisible’ thread to attach the leaves and for other elements intended to not be seen.

Landscape quilt – leaves and silk cocoon

Also on the tree and other areas of the quilt (like where leaves had ‘piled up’ were silk cocoons. I saw these at the last show I was at from a few of the vendors, but this time around I didn’t see any.  (Mind you, I also wasn’t specifically looking for them.) You can see a little bit here how the leaf edges have already started to fray just a tiny bit. Also here, the silk cocoon has a little silk-cocoon cap on it. It’s kind of cute, but not really my personal style.  Some of the silk cocoons have beads coming off them like a little tassel.

Landscape quilt – chain of leaves

Landscape quilt – stitched leaf

Landscape quilt – three dimensional leaves on the background.

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Tree and bark

Landscape quilt – tree and bark (with lots of moss)

Carola showed that she used the chenille method for making the ‘bark’ on the tree. With the curved branches, some of the ‘bark’ is on the bias, while other parts are straight – so different parts of the tree are fraying more than others.

Landscape quilt – chenille example

Here is an example of how the chenille is created – click the image for a larger version of the photo.

Basically you layer a number of fabrics and then slice through the top ones, exposing the colours of the fabrics underneath.  In this case there is a patterned fabric on the bottom, then a red, then a yellow, a light green and finally the top fabric – a darker green.

In the example of the bark on the tree, she used an orange fabric at the bottom by the looks of things (I don’t actually remember from the example in person) then a medium brown, and finally a dark brown as the top fabric. At the beginning of her project she intended the tree to be a cedar tree (more below about that) but then the tree was adapted to be something a bit different.

The fabric frays when you cut it – though you can also use a nail brush or something else that irritates the fibers to accelerate the fraying.  Cutting the fabrics on the bias will lead to less fraying, while more fraying will occur if the fabrics are on the straight of grain.

Moss

Landscape quilt

The moss in the tree was originally intended to be the branches of a cedar tree – but Carola said that it was just taking too long and she switched up her plan (largely due to impatience).  Instead what she had worked on for the boughs became moss for the tree.  These were made by first tracing a real cedar ‘leaf’, and then tracing that onto water-soluble stabilizer.

From there she used a quilting-weight thread to trace the design (doubling-up the stabilizer) with thread two, three, and four times. The example to the right shows the leaf stitched onto stabilizer, and then when the stabilizer is washed away, what the result looks like.

Other projects

Other projects that Carola showed off included a mosaic-tile type of quilt which was pretty cute, a black-based quilt with lots of rectangles, a sunflower quilt (taught by one of her students) and a few others.  I’ve written the posts, but they won’t be posted up for a few days – so stay tuned!  (If you try to click the links before I post them.. they won’t work – you’ll just have to come back!)

Book Review: Jelly Roll Quilts

Image from Chapters.ca - click for the original

In my ongoing search to find a cool pattern to effectively use my recently purchased Jelly Rolls, I picked up a few books, all by Pam and Nicky Lintott.  This book, which I believe is their first on the topic, is a great book illustrating different quilt patterns using these cool, pre-cut and selected fabric assortments.

There are a number of different quilt patterns included, and they give the dimensions for the quilts they demonstrate – so if you want to make one larger you can estimate how much more fabric you’ll need, or alternately, how much you might have left over if you plan on making one that is smaller.  Although I don’t always care for their colour choices (too bright, or too much contrast for my personal taste), they also have illustrations showing the quilt pattern.  I find these somewhat easier to look at, evaluate the pattern, and see if it’s something that I might want to do.

I also like the addition of the variation quilts.  I can imagine that for the designers, making two quilts that are the same except for a colour variation might become kind of boring, but I think this is a great idea for those of us who can’t really connect with a pattern if the colourway is distracting or doesn’t appeal to our sense of colour harmony.

At the back of the book they include a small quilted tote (use up all of those leftover pieces!) as well as a short section on quilting terms and techniques.

There are a few patterns in here that I really like – first the “bars of gold” -which I’ve known previously as Chinese Coins. It looks pretty simple, but I imagine doing it so the colours blend from one to the other just like they are displayed in the Jelly Roll.  There is also a pattern for a Lone Star quilt – I’ve been wanting to tackle a Lone Star quilt for a while, and have another book full of ideas, but perhaps a Jelly Roll is a good place to start?

Ah.. now if only I had a workable sewing room and the time to sew!

(peanut butter) Jelly Roll

I keep getting tempted by the gorgeous jelly rolls of fabric at quilting stores – beautiful combinations of beautiful fabrics usually organized in coordinating colours or in a rainbow effect.  Lovely!

Of course, at $40+ each, I haven’t been TOO tempted – but then I was at a shop and found some for $15 each, so I picked up two.  Mind you, I only realized afterwards that it’s about half the size of the ones I normally see… making it somewhat less of a good deal than I had been thinking.  All the same, I think it’s time to try a jelly roll quilt! (Especially since I’m still living through reno-hell and can’t get at everything I need if I wanted to actually work on one of my other quilts in progress….)

So, first, as always, the inspiration…

1600+ Quilt

Nacho Mama's 1600+ Quilt

The 1600+ Quilt – Basically with this one you take all 40 strips (or in my case, 20+20) from a jelly roll and sew them end to end into one very, very long (doggie amusing I presume) strip with mitered edges.  Then you sew the long ends together to form a very random striped quilt.  Most of the examples of this seem a wee bit garish to me, but an example  on Nacho Mama’s Quilt caught my eye because of the use of a common fabric used between each fabric – creating a tiny little accent to each of the angled lines.  I really liked this, along with the darker colour palate of the jelly roll than some of the other quilts.  I also liked another example, where the jelly roll fabrics were combined with one additional accent fabric.

Concept “Sketch”

So – how about something like this?   In this case the lengths of the fabric strips couldn’t be as random – which I imagine would make for slightly less good use of fabric.  It reminds me a bit of the clasped weft technique from my weaving class back in college.

Concept for the 1600 Quilt

Baby Sails

Baby Sails from Thankfully Sew

Another jelly roll quilt pattern that I kind of liked was called Baby Sails – although without the sailing aspect! This has that same striped effect to a degree – instead the jelly roll is cut up into bricks, and pieced back together again – but then there’s a border fabric added as well with applique.

Obviously this isn’t nearly as simple – the bricks are all the same size, and they are pieced with an even stagger – but ultimately it’s all just rectangles which is a lot easier than some of the other patterns that have inspired me in the past!

Flower Power

Flower Power from Thankfully Sew

The same company also sells a pattern for Flower Power – which has a bit more complexity when it comes to the piecing, but still has the border print on it, this time appliqued with flowers.  The flowers don’t appeal to me specifically, but rather the idea of that stripe of something different breaking up the overall pattern of the quilt.  I also really like this pattern – though I think it’s more successful with the monochromatic – and my jelly rolls have more of a rainbow of colours.

The Caledonia Quilter has something similar – but without the border and even nicer still, a third example of the same pattern, but with a more united background fabric.

Concept Sketch

So, I did up this quick “sketch” – and definitely, while I still like the pattern (with the background fabric) I don’t love it with the variety of colours that I have from my roll – a more monochromatic colour scheme appeals to me a lot more for this kind of pattern.

Concept sketch

Avigon’s Picnic, altered and shown on the Crafter without a Cat blog also appeals to me, this one being not dissimilar from the Flower Power quilt in concept – but this time she’s added a common background fabric which ties things together really well too.

the California Roll - click for the original source and article.

Lyn Brown’s California Roll appeals to me as well… this one has super-fast and easy looking construction – but with a really quirky end result that looks a lot more complicated than it actually is.  The more I look at  it, the more I like it.  I don’t really love the bright green, but it also seems to “work” for me for this design.. it really highlights that zig-zag.

The Sunrise Jelly Roll pattern on Hancock’s website really appealed to me too – but when I went back to it – the pattern was no longer available.  (Weird!)  Luckily I made a concept sketch of the quilt (below) before hand to see how some of my colours might look like with the design…  I chose a navy blue instead of black this time around.

Concept “Sketch”

So… some good ideas. Now it’s just a matter of digging my sewing machine out of the reno-mess and trying to put something together!

Book Review: Two from one jelly roll quilts

Image from Amazon.ca - click for original

I picked up a few books about Jelly Roll quilts recently – and a number of them are by Pam and Nicky Lintott.  I have recently started to want to work with the lovely combination of fabrics in Jelly Rolls – but thought that finding some patterns/designs especially meant for them would be ideal for making the best use of the fabric.

In this book the authors take one Jelly Roll, and make two quilts with it (with additional fabric of course).  Like the previous book I didn’t always care for their colour choices – I prefer more subdued colours rather than lots of brights, but there were more ideas in here that really worked for me for a possible Jelly Roll quilt.

Since they are using one roll to make two quilts – not all of the quilts are full-size, but all of the patterns can be adapted for larger quilts – even if it means you’ll need more than one jelly roll (or additional fabric for sashing/etc).

The quilt pattern that I really like from this book is called “Fairy Steps”… though I have a few other books to go through before I decide which pattern I want to use for the purples/pinks Jelly Roll I bought not too long ago!