Jolly Bar Jazz Quilt Along

9/29/2017

My Version of the Jolly Bar Jazz Quilt

I am so excited to be participating in my first Fat Quarter Shop Quilt Along! The new pattern is Jolly Bar Jazz and is of course available at the Fat Quarter Shop. Their Jolly Jabber Blog has all the details! In the meantime, here is my version of the pattern. I took this picture in front of my home at JANDA Bend.

The quilt requires only 12 large blocks to make a twin size quilt. It goes together very easily and uses one Jolly Bar (42 5" by 10" precut) and background material.

Here are some additional photos of the quilt.

In my quilt, I used the Rainy Day Jolly Bar by Me and My Sister and the Sky Blue Kona background material. I love these fabrics! They are bright and happy! Since I was participating in the Jolly Bar Jazz Quilt Along, the Fat Quarter Shop sent me the pattern and a gift certificate to help pay for the cost of the fabric.

The large quilt blocks are built from a center square and two kinds of blocks easily cut from strip sets. I chose to use a fish fabric for the center square in each block. Although the diagonal blocks look complicated, they are a breeze to make using the strip set method. See the photo below.

One Block Ready to Complete

I had a lot of fun arranging the blocks on my design wall. Although the quilt is scrappy, I wanted to balance out the colors and fabric designs. The collection ranged from cute rain prints to solids, wavy lines, and stripes of varying widths. I waited to complete sewing the blocks until I was satisfied with the distribution of the colors and fabric designs. See photo below.

Design Wall

Once I had sewn each block, I then completed the top by adding the background lattice strips and border.

I decided to quilt the top using free motion quilting. I am still learning this technique. However, sometimes you just to have to be brave and go for it! I outlined each of the nine squares in the blocks by quilting in the ditch first. Then I used free motion quilting inside each square and in the lattice strips. I made spirals for each center fish block. I used a leaf template for the border. Overall. I am happy with the way the quilting turned out. However, I am still learning. All the quilting was done using my longarm. See photo below.

Close-up of Quilting

Participating in this Fat Quarter Shop Quilt Along was a great experience! I hope to have the opportunity to do it again sometime. I do have some scraps leftover from cutting the strip sets. I have an idea for how to use them to make a table runner or placemats. Stay tuned for that upcoming post!