Happy Sew a Jelly Roll Day friends, today we celebrate this tempting fabric roll in all its colourful glory! To mark the occasion, I thought I’d tell the story of my very first quilt and share some project inspiration with you.

Not sure what a jelly roll is? No worries, head over to my recent guide to fabric precuts for a quick introduction.

Have you ever wanted to try a new craft, but found it a bit too intimidating to give it a go? I’ve long been quilt curious, but it seemed to need an overwhelming amount of time, space, equipment, and new skills. That all changed in 2019 when some of my fellow Woolly Workers started whipping up jelly roll race quilt tops in a couple of hours, and I wondered how hard it could really be. All it took was the love of Janet Clare’s ‘Weather Permitting’ fabric collection for Moda to tip me over the edge, and a month later I had a finished quilt and a new hobby!

I picked a beginner friendly pattern that I’d found on Pinterest, which needed just one jelly roll to make a generous throw sized quilt. The 2 1/2 inch strips were divided up by colour, cut into 3 different sized blocks, then stitched together in a simple brick layout. ‘Weather Permitting’ had a very muted palette of blues and creams, with a little hint of starkly contrasting gold that I wanted to make a feature of. The simple layout of the pattern let me play around with this without having to worry about a lot of complex cutting and piecing. My overall idea was for the quilt to look like a cloudy, changeable day reflected in a pool – perhaps it has rained and the sun is just peeking through the clouds again.

I chose Sew Simple Super Soft Bamboo wadding, which I had heard great things about. I’m a lover of natural fibres, and I found bamboo a softer, silkier alternative to cotton wadding, which was nice and easy to feed through a domestic sewing machine. I was so nervous about the actual quilting part of the project, and I tried to keep it simple by stitching long straight lines in a contrasting mustard colour that looks great against the blues, and particularly the inky indigo backing fabric. This was a bit ambitious and I did feel I’d bitten off more quilting than I could chew at times! My closely spaced lines were ultimately, not very straight, but I’m happy with the overall effect, and I should cut myself some slack as a beginner.

I backed my project with Moda Bella Solids Extra Wide in navy, and I also used it for the binding, which frames the quilt nicely and saved on buying additional binding fabric. The backing is super wide, so I didn’t have many joins in my binding, which was a bonus. The most surprising thing about this project was how much I enjoyed hand sewing the binding to the quilt. I spent a couple of evenings in a comfy chair absorbed and stitching away with a podcast on.

My finished quilt is one of my proudest crafting accomplishments! I’m a hopeless perfectionist, but I’m so happy with how it turned out, even if there were some beginner blunders along the way. I loved the process of playing with layout and colour placements, and it inspired me to get straight into an improvised quilting project with the scraps of jelly roll that I had left over (more on that project another time). Starting simple with a jelly roll was a great way to gain confidence and get to grips with patchwork and quilting basics!

If you’re feeling tempted to have a go yourself, check out these free projects from Moda, released exclusively for today’s event! I love that they’ve even included a bag pattern this year. And you can of course find a great selection of fabric rolls on our website here….

Will you be digging into your fabric stash today? Share your projects with us using the hashtag #woolwarehousecrafters, we’d love to see what you’re making!