Kismet

After I'd finished my Winter Blues quilt for Project Quilting 16.2. I always wondered if it would work with a jellyroll…and it sure did! It's taken me no less than five quilts (yep, this is number 5!) made in this pattern to finally answer that question! Here is Kismet, and she has quite the story to tell.

Yes, just one jellyroll, well, actually, half of one jellyroll!

I looked in my stash of jellyrolls (which, counting this one, consists of just five--I'm not really a collector of precuts), and decided upon this bright one, Palm Springs by Michele D'Amore for Benartex. I was contemplating what two colours of background fabrics I'd use with these bright fabrics, when, upon unrolling, I saw a print I recognized! It was a line drawn floral, white on black. I had that print in yardage! I actually thought that I might have it in cream as well.

Enter some oh-so-pleasant time of riffling/pawing/petting through my yardage stash, and... yes! Cream! And wow! No WAY!! Green! I do not recall buying the cream or the green, but I do recall buying the black, a yard of it at the Port Charlotte quilt show probably in 2017 or 2018, maybe even 2016. I used up all the black but for a couple of scraps, but I had a ½ yard each of the cream and the green. Yay, former me! I do not even know where I picked up the jellyroll but seeing the three come together like this, AND in a quilt of my own design? Well, needless to say I was screaming (to use a favourite phrase of my daughter Brianne's), or, in my own words, giddy with excitement.

I'm not usually one to ensure fabric lines all stay together; my feeling is the more the merrier and combining different companies makes me also giddy, this time with joy and seeing how they play together. Well, speaking of playing...

I'd sewn the side borders onto the flimsy at this point, and was just measuring in a few spots before I cut the top and bottom borders. Bella is entranced by that measuring tape and within seconds was padding over to take a look, sniff, bite, and then had to pose as she is known to do!

Here's the flimsy, as seen on Instagram five days ago.

When I found a backing and then loaded it, it didn't take long at all to quilt. I knew I would do straight lines, but I didn't want to just do straight lines, so once it was loaded, I let the quilt talk to me. Well, to be honest, one of the placemats I designed for a Benartex ezine (yep Benartex, more synchronicity) that I used on our outside table on the deck talked to me. I'd quilted it with straight lines, half a square in each quadrant that mirrored each other. So I went with that. Sort of. 

Because I did the half of a square quilting in the top row, it ended up being half a rectangle. What would I do in the middle row? I knew I'd mirror what I did in the top... Straight lines it was. They're all 1" apart.

It shows up a little better on the back. Kinda cool, no?

The back is a piece of OshKosh fabric I've had for (cough) some time. Terrific quality cotton. And it is absolutely perfect for the colours on the front: boys and girls marching along in coral, green and blue. It's all gone but for a very long 14" wide strip.

At first I was worried about finding a binding. This pattern uses all but about 4" of the ½ yard of each background, and because I'd used a tiny bit of each of these, there was no way I could bind it with either. I wanted a green because the final border is very narrow. Well, enter a Robert Kaufman in the perfect shade of green with white fancy bracket shapes throughout!

Are you seeing why it had to be called Kismet? From the jellyroll to the perfect two backgrounds in the exact right amounts, to the perfect backing, to the binding, it's incredible how it all came together as if it were planned from the get-go.

A close-up of  the half-rectangle quilting. I'm going to do this on another baby quilt or boomer blankie, but go from the centre out. It will involve some rolling on the longarm, but it will be cool.

The above photo shows you that the warm hearts and the cool hearts are not identical. I made three warm hearts with orange and yellow strips, and two with pinks and reds. Two of the four cool hearts use a black polkadot fabric because I only had one strip of blue (actually navy) polkadot.

So the answer is yes, you can totally use a jellyroll. In fact, one jellyroll will yield two baby quilts, as long as you have another ½ yard each of two backgrounds. The hearts will be less controlled-scrappy than you may like but I found that since the jellyroll is all one line, they do coordinate, and can yield a rather pleasing result!

The quilt is for sale in my Etsy shop!