Jellyroll Baby Quilt - Quick and Easy!

Sometimes you need a quick quilt for a little one, or maybe you are wanting to work up some quilts for a local charity. This is perfect! You will not use up your entire jellyroll...unless you choose to make several. You could get your friends together and have a little sewing retreat for the afternoon and whip these out!

The jellyroll that I have used for these quilt tops was gifted to me by a very sweet woman who lost her home in a fire. Many folks came together to provide her with fabric to sew on to help replace the irreplaceable. She did not have any little ones to sew for and so she passed this along to me. In the spirit that it was gifted to her, I feel that it should be continued on and gifted to others, therefore I am making several quilts from this one jellyroll and they will be donated locally. 

Sew let's get started!

Pick a jelly roll to work from...

You will need 8 strips. Mix and match or stay in one colorway, the beauty of a Jellyroll is all of the fabrics are already coordinated, you can't go wrong! (if you don't have a spare jellyroll laying around or you don't want to purchase one, you can work from your stash by cutting 8 - 2.5" x WOF strips)

Once you have selected your strips, you will also need enough background fabric to make a 4.5" strip by WOF (width of fabric)
and two 2.5" x WOF strips.

You can add border to the quilt center to make it any size you wish. The quilt center will finish at 24.5" square. As I finish my quilts, I will add onto this post and give you dimensions for my finish.

We are ready to sub cut our strips as shown in the photo below.
From your jellyroll strips cut 

16 - 2.5" squares
8 -   4.5 x 2.5" strips
24 - 6.5 x 2.5" strips

From your background fabric cut:

8 -   4.5" squares
24 - 2.5" squares

This will make one quilt center.

Let's work on the easy block first. For this block you will use 16 of your 6.5" strips,16 of your jellyroll 2.5" squares, 8 of your background fabric 2.5" squares.  I like to lay them out as shown so I can see if I like the way the fabrics look together and to avoid repeats. 

Stitch the center 2.5" squares together first. I like to chain stitch them as it goes faster, so I pick up the top two squares and stitch them together for each set. Clip them apart and finger press them open, pick up the remaining 2.5" square and stitch it to the background fabric. Press your seams to the colored fabric.

Once that is done, chain stitch one of the side pieces to the block, clip apart, chain stitch the other side to the block and press to the colored fabric. You should have 8 blocks when you are finished.

MAKE 8 BLOCKS

That was easy, right? Okay, lets move onto the next block.

For this block you will lay out the remaining fabric that you have cut to correspond with the photo below.

You can use a removable marking pen or pencil to mark your remaining 2.5" background fabric squares on the diagonal as shown. If you don't want to mark them, you can fold them in half and make a finger crease. For new quilters, I recommend that you mark your diagonal. Make sure you are using something that is erasable to mark with. I like the Frixion pens, they iron right out, be sure to test on a piece of scrap first. They also come in a multitude of colors.

Pay particular attention to how the diagonal is laid out in the photo above. If you rotate your background squares as you stitch them, you will not have the result you want.

Again, I like to chain piece. starting with the smaller of the strips (the one at the bottom in the photo above). Stitch right on your line. TIP; to avoid stuffing the tip of your corner into your machine and getting a balled up mess of thread...start your seam as shown below from the long edge of your fabric rather than the tip.

Once you have done this, do the same for the longer piece that is to the left in the layout photo...remember, don't turn your pieces around or you'll have a mess.

Now, trim the corners as shown in the photo below, trim 1/4" past the line that you have marked for the diagonal. Finger press open first pressing to the dark fabric, then give a quick press with your iron. Put your pieces back in the layout show in the earlier photo above.

Taking the short piece first, stitch that to one of your 4.5" squares. Again, I chain piece all of these so it goes fast. Press them open, pressing them to the background fabric this time.

Grab your long piece and stitch to the other side. Again pressing your seam to the 4.5" background fabric. You should now have 8 blocks that look like the photo below.

MAKE 8 BLOCKS

Now assemble your quilt. Lay your blocks out as shown below. Start with four center blocks and four corner blocks then fill in with your secondary block. Don't be afraid to move things around until you have something that pleases you. Also, don't be so critical, baby won't care.

LAY OUT YOUR BLOCKS AS SHOWN

I like to stitch across in rows and press my seams in one direction for the first row and the opposite direction for the second and so forth. This will let you "nest" your seams for perfect intersections.

There will be updates to this post as I finish the quilt tops...so check back. You should be able to get at least 6 baby quilts from your jellyroll.  I used a combination of 2.5" strips of the white kona cotton around the center block as the first border and the outside border can be any combination of strips that will give you a width of 4.5" This will have your little baby quilt finishing out at a nice 36" square. On the purple quilt below I used a combination of a 1.5" strip of a pretty word fabric and a 3.5" strip of a purple floral. Whatever works for you is fine. You will get 6 quilts out of the one jellyroll by adding an equal amount of Kona Cotton Strips. All have been donated to Project Linus in Grass Valley, CA.  I will be making more of these, they are quick and fun!