I came across a great tutorial the other day on youtube by Misouri Quilters and thought I would give it a whirl as I have had a Kaffe Fassett jelly roll sitting there looking at me for far too long! The thing I like about this method is that you only have to sew two long seams and then because of the way you cut it, you have a variety of different effects you can create.
First of all you take two strips from your jelly roll and then sew them together, length ways (right sides facing).
two jelly roll strips
Sew them together
Make sure you iron the seam flat (towards the darker fabric).
Now you need another piece of fabric that is the same width of the two jelly roll pieces sewn together ie. 4.5″ x width of bolt. I had some batik fabrics left over from another project and so decided to try that out.
4.5″ x width of bolt strip
Now for the tube part:
Lay your 4.5″ strip of fabric on top of the other two strips (right sides facing)
Lay them on top of each other
Then sew a quarter inch seam down both lengths of the fabric – thus creating your tube!
Quarter inch seam down both sides
Now you need a large square ruler (I used a 12.5″) with a 45 deg angle marked on it and you need to place the line of the 45 deg angle on top of your seam line as in the picture below:
45 deg line is on top of seam line
Make your cut
Keeping the edge of your ruler against the edge of the fabric you just slide it down so that the 45 deg angle line is sitting on top of the other seam line:
Make your cut and then slide back to the other seam line:
Keep going in this way until you get to the other end.
Now for the fun part. Open up and iron your resulting squares flat and then ….. time to play!
The Crafty Pioneer 