Jelly Roll Quilt Pattern Idea

It’s been exactly one month since National Sew a Jelly Roll Day and I have finally finished my jelly roll quilt quilting, photographed my quilt and am ready to update this blog post with photos from each of the steps.

This might be the FASTEST tutorial I’ve ever written to share with you all, and it’s definitely a good look at what quilt pattern and tutorial writing looks like inside my head before I polish it up for sharing. Now that I’m updating with photos, I am going to leave the original graphics in place as well, just with the addition of photos.

What is a Jelly Roll?

A jelly roll is quilting fabric that has been pre-cut for you. Jelly Rolls generally have 40 pieces of fabric that are 2½” wide by 40-42” long.

Jelly Rolls are normally sold by collection, so depending on the number of fabrics in the collection, there may be 1, 2 or 3 strips of each fabric.

Some years I buy a Jelly Roll for NSAJRD, but often I cut my own fabric strips because outside of the occasional sale, I find that buying by the yard is generally more economical.

Last year I did both. I made my own strips to write and test a free pattern ahead of time, and then used a pre-made roll on the Saturday of NSAJRD.

This year I am going to cut my own fabric strips from this assortment of fabrics from my stash.

The Jelly Roll Quilt Pattern I Will Use

Here it comes, the fastest tutorial I’ve ever shared and my plan for a Jelly Roll Quilt.

Supplies Needed:

1 Jelly Roll

½ Yard fabric for binding

Sew all 40 jelly roll strips to another along the length of the fabric strip to make 20 pairs. Press seam allowance towards the darker fabric. Pairs measure 4½” wide.

Sub-cut 3½” units. Cut up to 11 units from each pair, that’s 220 total.

Sew two units together to make a 4-patch quilt block that measures 4½” wide by 6½” tall. Make 110 blocks which will use up all of your 220 units.

Sew 11 blocks into a row. While this graphic only shows 6 blocks, you definitely want each row to have 11 blocks and alternate the direction of sewing as shown in the arrows. I also recommend flipping every other block upside down so that the horizontal seam allowances will nestle nicely together.

Make 10 rows of 11 block each. The rows are 6½” tall and 44½” wide. Sew all 10 rows together. Again, this graphic doesn’t show all of the rows, but does show the alternating direction for sewing. This helps the fabrics to not warp into a curve.

And there is a super quick 44 ½” by 60” Jelly Roll quilt!

I talked myself into very, very dense quilting for this baby jelly roll quilt. I can tell you exactly HOW it happened (I didn’t want an X in the middle of every square), but I wish I had spaced my quilting a little bit further apart. Maybe a full inch between lines? Maybe even a little more than that.