Hello all, Mary Ellen here.

I’ve had a few requests from my nieces for seasonal quilts for their family rooms. I have so much fabric in my stash that I want to use what I have rather than buying more, and I want to use a pattern that will chop some of the uglies into small pieces AND will be fast and easy to cut.

I’ve decided to make jelly roll race quilts. Do you know what those are? (See here if not).(You could also search for jelly roll quilt or jelly roll 1600 to see other blog posts about this.) One modification I am planning to make is to cut each 40 inch strip in half to 20 inches. That will give more variety – scrappiness? – to the top. Both nieces are quite tall. I wanted to make sure that there will be enough size to the quilt to make for good snuggliness (??) this fall and winter. That site linked above will have some links for more info on varying the sizes of your quilt, and ideas for “style” variations as well.

If you start with a pre-cut jelly roll and  postpone most of the ironing to the very end, you can complete the top in about 1 hour. Really! I’ve done it and timed myself. Under 2 hours is really easy!

Challenge yourself and report back to us on how long it took! (Some guilds use this race idea for a program and then donate the tops for charity quilts. hint, hint!)