Before I share how I quilted, I wanted to first share what was presented in a recent guild meeting. A member who had made one went to a workshop out of town to support her friend who wanted to do one and this member came back with a LOT of tips:
- many of the workshop ladies sewed the first 20 strips together and set that aside, then sewed the second 20 together, which prevented The Heartburn of Tangled and Knotted strips since the hummer is so dang long for the first few seams ...
- many people put all their strips vertically on their design walls and rearranged the strips to better distribute colors because many times in the jelly rolls, you'll have clusters of light or a specific color, and these ladies made the distribution more random or more "pleasing" to their eyes.
- some "1600 repeaters" had tinkered with their jelly rolls: they put each strip vertically on their design wall and made one cut in each strip somewhere between 12" and 28" from the top (short) edge. They then sewed the top "row" of strips end-to-end together, and then sewed the bottom "row" of strips end-to-end before proceeding with the construction. This made the overall look a lot more scrappy.
- three of the workshop attendees used the honey buns (the rolls of 1 1/2" strips) instead of the jelly rolls, which made a beauifully generous crib quilt or quilt for a toddler. One of these three honeybun-ers took their cue from the women who cut their strips between 12" and 28" and cut hers into three uneven pieces, since she knew her quilt would be much smaller in each direction, and the end look was gorgeously scrappy and beautifully distributed. Our guild member took lots of photos of this second workshop's results and shared them with us - I really like what these ladies did and have plans to do this second cut technique with future "1600" quilts.
HOW I QUILTED MINE: the jellyroll quilt was all autumn fabrics, so I selected a medium-scale leaf pantograph in gold metallic thread. For the other (a honeybun), it was a simple diagonal cross-hatch in a complementary variegated thread.
Last edited by Wunder-Mar; 02-26-2012 at 01:19 PM.