National Sew A Jelly Roll Day....Weekend?

 I've got a lot going on these days, I haven't done a mystery quilt in a couple years, haven't finished the last one I started, and even though I sew as much as I can, I still feel out of the loop. I haven't even been keeping up with the online quilt groups I am in. 

That's why it was so important to me that I get to participate in Sew a Jelly Roll Day. I didn't choose a one day pattern, so I knew I couldn't finish the top in a day, and I was using other projects as leader/enders while working on my jelly roll top, but I did indeed sew on it on September 19th. 

This was my starting place, the jelly roll Paisley Place by Wilmington Fabrics, some background strips I cut from a piece in my stash, and a pattern from Scrap Basket Strips and Squares by Kim Brackett. If you have never seen a Kim Brackett book, you are missing out, her patterns are fantastic! 

I chose the pattern Off Course, which I've made before, and I will make again. It's a fun, easy pattern to make. 

To make the pattern as shown, you only need 30 strips, and I had 40 in my jelly roll. I had four peach strips and I pulled out all of those, since the contrast with my background wasn't great, and I pulled out some black and white prints that I found to be a bit boring in comparison with the other fabrics. The good thing about pulling out the more boring prints? They will be easily used in another project, no crazy prints to try to fit in with different lines of fabrics. 

Step one was to sew a background strip to each jelly roll strip. 

By the time those were sewn and pressed, I ran out of sewing time for that day. The next morning I subcut the stripsets per pattern instructions, and soon I was making blocks.

My jelly roll strips were longer than the pattern assumed, so I cut some extra units. I have an extra block, and some extra parts, but not enough variety to make more blocks. I do have some extra background strips, so I'm thinking I may go ahead, pull some strips from my scrap user system and make another quilt. I could use the strips I didn't use in this one, but now that I'm thinking another quilt, I am still likely to exclude the boring ones unless I can find some really stunning ones in my scrap stash and need some boring ones to calm things down. 

This is how my jelly roll quilt top came out, and I'm quite happy with it. It looks better in person than in photos, which is often how things go. Did you sew a jelly roll up for National Sew a Jelly Roll day? I really want to do this pattern in one color of scraps, probably blue since I usually have the most blue scraps, and a white background. I think the design might show up better with less variety in the fabrics. The upside of the large value variety in this quilt is that it creates a lot of movement, your eyes are moving around trying to get the big picture.