Finished 17 September 2017

When I got a Kona cotton jelly roll by Robert Kaufman I was planning to make a Jelly Roll Race quilt, just for fun. Then I ran across this tutorial from Missouri Star for what they call a Stack and Flip quilt, and fell in love. One jelly roll, some strips of yardage for borders, and simple strip piecing. What more could a quilter want for a fast and easy child's quilt?

To begin with, I laid out the strips in the order they came in the jelly roll. I didn't like the starting and ending sequence, so I re-arranged the first few color values, leaving the eight blues from the beginning aside to use as the binding strips. Then I took a picture so I would be able to keep the colors organized as I sewed the strips.

From my experiences working with Trip Around the World and bargello strip piecing, I find it best to work in twos. First I sew all of the strips together in groups of two, sewing from the top. I press all seams towards the even-numbered strips. This doesn't matter for this particular quilt, but it's a good habit to get into for Trip and bargello quilts.

Then I sew these sets of two together, working from the bottom of the strips. This helps keep the seams from gradually bowing the piece out of alignment. These seams are again pressed towards the initial even-numbered strips. This lets you have the seams going in alternating directions when offsetting the secondary strips in Trip and bargello quilts. Again, that's not important for this quilt.

I cut the two side strips at the same 7" and 6" as in the tutorial. I chose some plain white muslin from my stash for the 3" sashing and the 4" borders.

And here's the finished top, done in a morning.

For the backing, I pieced a length of a novelty classic cars print with strips of gold. The dark print nicely offsets the bright top, keeping the whole thing from being too light. This is for a little boy, and I suspect that he may like the cars on the back better than the front.

The Quilting

I've ordered some variegated thread from a local shop, it should arrive in the mail about the same time I get this pinned and ready to quilt. I'm thinking of just a simple diagonal grid, the colors are strong enough to carry off the whole picture without any embellishment.

The diagonal grid did exactly what I hoped it would do, it slightly blended the colors and de-emphasized the strong striped look. I went with a stylized half-sun motif with filler free-style sunflowers for the border, which complemented the rainbow effect. Hence "Sunny Morning Rainbow".

And here it is, finished and bound with strips left over from the jelly roll.