Jelly Roll 2024 – The Beachy Quilt

I made a new version of the Beachy Quilt for the Jelly Roll Quilt 2024 event!

National Sew a Jelly Roll Day occurs every September, I usually try to have a jelly roll quilt pattern or tutorial ready to share in advance of the day.

I moved at the end of July 2024, and as a result have done almost no quilting or planning this summer or fall and therefore had nothing new to share.

I still wanted to participate, and I have always wanted to make a version of my (completely free!) Beachy Quilt Pattern with darker sashing, and so I did.

I shared my progress on Instagram and Facebook on the day of the event and wanted to share here too.

Jelly Roll Quilting

A jelly roll in quilting is fabric that has been cut into 2½” strips. You can purchase jelly rolls that have forty fabric strips (generally 2-3 strips of each fabric).

Since I did no planning ahead of time, I did not have a pre-cut jelly roll. I made my own by cutting some of my fabric into 2½” strips. For the size of quilt I wanted to make, I needed thirty strips.

This quilt can be made larger or smaller with more or less fabric strips You can find all of the directions in the Free Beachy Quilt Pattern.

I sewed the thirty strips into fifteen pairs.

It is super easy to sub-cut the strip sets. If you do it two at a time, they are lined up and ready to be sewn into the block centers.

I was really excited to try this pattern out with darker sashing, and intentionally picked fabrics that I thought would pop.

The block centers are rectangles, adding the sashing on the sides makes them squares. The blocks are rotated throughout the quilt top.

Because I have a 4-legged helper, I had my blocks sewn into groups of four before I laid them out on the living room floor. I always like to see the block placement before I sew them together. That way I can adjust as needed, but I also always want the least number of pieces on the floor.

Taking a Quilt Top and Making a Quilt

I am working on a tutorial to teach you how I marked my quilting lines. Hopefully that will be ready to share soon.

If I had been working from a real jelly roll with forty strips, I would have used six of those strips to make my binding. Since I was cutting my own fabric, I used a black and white stripe.

Make sure to check out the Beachy Quilt pattern, it is free and will come right to your email. I made the whole quilt top in just one day. I even managed to finish early enough to snap a photo before sunset. This is definitely a quick pattern!