Denise Sheehan’s Jelly Roll Jive

We are back from our holiday hiatus! We hope you are all enjoying your holidays to the fullest with friends, family, and other loved ones, and Happy New Year! Today we have Denise Sheehan from A Graceful Stitch joining our blog and talking about her great new pattern, “Jelly Roll Jive.”

About Jelly Roll Jive
I was so excited to hear Fat Quarter Shop was going to kit Jelly Roll Jive (the Indigo Girl Quilt Kit). It is such a fun pattern and I love to see the results from all the different Jelly Rolls quilters use. I taught a Jelly Roll Jive class and it was amazing and inspiring to see the variety of Jelly Rolls my students used. We had a dog themed Jive, a batik, a 30’s, a Christmas and a Halloween to name a few. The possibilities are endless.

When I first set out to design this quilt, I used all of the strips from one Jelly Roll. It was way too busy, so I decided to use the same background for all of the stars. I took the next Jelly Roll on a weekend retreat and dove right in to the piecing even though I had left my block diagram at home. It was so easy to put together since most of the cutting with a jelly roll is already done for you. I put the whole top together and didn’t realize until I got home that it was not what I had intended. I had accidentally created a new layout.

Hence, Jelly Roll Jive is two quilts in one pattern. I made the second quilt according to my original plan. It is a great block and you end up with “stars” or “pinwheels” depending on which way you put it together. Mistakes are not all bad! I love the little pinwheels in the borders – I didn’t want to throw away the extra triangles, so I pieced the border pinwheels while I was assembling the main quilt blocks.

Quilters Are The Best
I was reading PAMKITTYMORNING and she talked about a magazine article she was reading about Quilt and Be Happy. I have thought a lot lately about how quilting and designing make me very happy and how quilters are the best. I am so blessed to have a community of wonderful quilting friends. My 16 year old daughter was recently hospitalized for three weeks right before Quilt Market (she’s back to being a normal teenager now!)

Although Verna and Joanna were up to their eyeballs in their own preparations, they took the time to help and advise two dear friends that were originally going to “assist” me at Market. Instead the “assistants” ended up planning, organizing, shipping and staffing A Graceful Stitch’s booth at Market. Meanwhile another group of wonderful friends completed an entire pieced and appliquéd bed sized quilt I had designed. The quilt had a deadline for McCalls Quick Quilts and they did a fabulous job. It will be in the May, 2008 issue which will hit newsstands in early March. Fat Quarter Shop has the fabric, A Beautiful Time, available here. As I said, Quilters are the best!

Here are two of our newest quilts that were in our booth at market.

Thank you for the opportunity to be a guest blogger!
Denise Sheehan