Let me see that jelly roll. (To the left, to the left…)

This one was a real feel-good project. I made this jelly roll quilt for a great charity called Project Night Night as part of my Modern Quilt Guild’s fall project. The charity gives a bag to kids entering a shelter with a new blanket, book, and stuffed animal inside, for them to keep. Something permanent and full of sweetness in a difficult time. It’s hard not to want to be a part of that, right? Another member of my guild showed a very similar quilt in a slightly different palette a few months back, and I was really taken by its impact, despite its simplicity. So, voila.

I challenged myself with a few new things on this one. First, pieced binding. Well, all binding is pieced, but this one was a LOT of small pieces. I wanted there to be more color and life on the front, and I think having the rainbow on the outside helped accomplish that. Also, a new free motion quilting design! Well, new for me. I saw this flower pattern on Elizabeth Hartman’s blog, and have been waiting for the right project to play with it.  Because this is for a kid, I thought adding some flowers to the top would keep it sweet. Don’t look too closely– some of those have 6 petals, some have 7! It’s a great all over design though for something whimsical, because you can make those flowers as large or as small as you want to, and echo as many times as you need to to fill the space. I found it easier than I thought it would be.

Finally, I made myself try and match up the pattern on the back fabric. I never do this– I’m seriously so lazy it is ridiculous. For this quilt, I chose a very loud Kaffe Fassett print that perfectly matched the colors on the front. It’s a little hard to tell from these photos, which were shot inside, at night, in terrible fluorescent light, but I swear to you, it matched so well that I sucked air when I found it.
 I didn’t do a perfect job, because holy crap that is a hard print to match up, but I did have some success. BOOM. See that down there? OUTSTANDING. Okay… it’s not that great. But it’s better than I’ve ever done before. Well, okay.. it’s the first time I ever tried. But surely the quilt police would give me partial credit, right?
Here’s the whole package for Project Night Night. This quilt, the softest bunny you’ve ever felt, and a really sweet story that I LOVE about how even the smallest bit of positivity can spread around the world. Hope you are finding yourself off to a productive and positive New Year!