Antique To Heirloom Jelly Roll Quilts. Pam Lintott

cutting half-square triangles from strips we use the Multi-Size 45/90 and the Multi-Size 45/60 from Creative Grids, which have markings that refer to the finished size. If you are using a different ruler when cutting half-square and quarter-square triangles please make sure you are using the correct markings before cutting.

       Sweet Sixteen

       Antique Inspiration

      The 1930s was a time of great economic upheaval, with the 1929 stock market crash in America heralding a decade of hard times called the Great Depression. This American quilt dates back to those times but is anything but depressing, with its bright colours and simple design. Quilters who couldn’t afford to buy new fabrics sought inspiration from magazines and created many inventive designs from fabric scraps, recycled clothing and feedsack materials. Block designs with small pieces, such as Bow Tie, Irish Chain and Drunkard’s Path became popular as they allowed quilters to ensure that even the smallest scraps of fabric were not wasted. Colour choices became lighter and brighter than the previously more sombre Colonial style.

      This charming quilt has sixteen-patch blocks made up of sixteen small squares of different fabrics, alternating with light plain squares, and would have been a popular design to create from scrap fabrics. The quilt was bought as a quilt top while we were on a trip to the Quilt Market in Houston, USA. We backed it with a plain calico and then longarm quilted it in a medium-sized feather design. The quilt measures 75in × 86in (191cm × 219cm).

       Today’s Heirloom

      For our modern-day quilt it would have been very easy to use a bright and cheerful reproduction 1930s range of fabrics combined with white. The result would have looked stunning and authentic and this is an option you might consider. However, we decided instead to make our heirloom quilt in warm, creamy fabrics and chose a jelly roll from Fig Tree & Co called Buttercup. This range has a lovely mix of blue, peach, pink, mint green and light brown, and when alternated with a creamy tone-on-tone fabric it created a quilt that made you feel warm just looking at it.

      This is a quick and easy quilt to create and would be a perfect design for someone who has never made a jelly roll quilt before and ‘just wants to get started’. The design echoes the antique quilt and its piecing couldn’t be easier. It could be quilted in your favourite way, by hand or machine. The quilt was made by the authors and longarm quilted by The Quilt Room.

       Sweet Sixteen Quilt

      Vital Statistics

      Finished Size: 72in × 72in

      Block Size: 8in square

      Number of Blocks: 81

      Setting: 9 × 9 blocks

      Requirements

      • One jelly roll OR forty 2¹⁄₂in wide strips cut across the width of the fabric

      • 2³⁄₄yd (2.5m) of background fabric

      • 24in (60cm) of fabric for binding

      Cutting Instructions

       Jelly roll strips:

      • Cut each jelly roll strip in half to create eighty half strips 2¹⁄₂in × 21in approximately.

       Background fabric:

      • Cut eleven 8¹⁄₂in wide strips across the width of the fabric and subcut each into four 8¹⁄₂in squares. You need forty-one in total, so three are spare.

       Binding fabric:

      • Cut eight 2¹⁄₂in wide strips across the width of the fabric.

       Making the Sixteen-Patch Blocks

      1 Select four jelly roll half strips and sew them together lengthways as in the diagram below. Press the seams in one direction. Your strip unit should measure 8¹⁄₂in wide so adjust your seam allowance if your unit doesn’t match this measurement.

      2 Lay one strip unit on the cutting mat at a time. Trim the selvedge and subcut into eight 2¹⁄₂in segments. Always line up the markings on the ruler with the seam to make sure you are cutting at a right angle.

      3 Repeat steps 1 and 2 to make twenty strip units and subcut each into eight 2¹⁄₂in segments. You need 160 2¹⁄₂in segments in total.

      4 Choose four different segments and sew them together, turning alternate segments around so the seams are in opposite directions. Pin at every seam intersection to ensure a perfect match. Try not to sew squares of the same fabric next to each other. Press the finished block.

      5 Repeat the process to make forty sixteen-patch blocks in total.

      Make 40

       Assembling the Quilt

      6 Lay out the blocks as shown in the diagram, alternating a sixteen-patch block with a background square. Sew the blocks into rows, pressing the seams towards the background square. Sew the rows together, pinning at every seam intersection to ensure a perfect match and then press.

       Finishing the Quilt

      7 The quilt top is now complete. Prepare the top, wadding (batting) and backing fabric for quilting and quilt as desired – see Quilting in the General Techniques section. Bind the quilt to finish, following the instructions in Binding a Quilt.

       Heirloom Quilt Ideas

      Sixteen-patch blocks are perfect for using up scraps from your stash but you can also create patterns with them by more careful colour arrangement.

      For example, try creating a diagonal pattern across the quilt by using very dark-coloured squares through the diagonal of each block.