Vacation!

My Kona Challenge took to the road last week.  For the first time ever, I took my sewing machine with me on vacation!  My poor husband was a bit horrified as I brought down bag after bag of fabric and supplies to be wedged into the car, but he managed to get it all in (with little complaint) and off we headed to the Sunshine Coast to a little cabin on the water.

Here is the view from the deck.

Talk about getting the creative juices flowing!   I brought along 4 projects to work on as my attention span is not the greatest.  Did I start work immediately on the Challenge?  Of course not!  I decided to try my hand at a Jelly Roll Race quilt!

For those of you that don't know about this yet, the theory is simple.  Take a large jelly roll and separate all the strips.  Then join them all together end to end to make one massive long strip. I decided to join my as in binding so the seams are on an angle but you can do them blunt ended too, it's your choice.

Now because I'm kind of obsessive with my fabric, I decided to stitch up the 1/2 square triangles that are trimmed off and I'll do something with those later...maybe on the back? 

Before you sew a single stitch, you must cut 18 inches off one end!  You can save this to use with the 1/2 square triangles.  Or make a hair bow, or dog collar, or put it in your scrap basket.  Whatever you do...

 DO NOT FORGET TO CUT OFF THIS PIECE!

This is why my quilt just may be named "The 2 Day Jelly Roll Race!".  The reason you cut off this piece is so that when you take the 2 ends and start to sew them together, they are offset.  If you do not do this, then they line up and you might as well just be sewing strips together.  I sewed one seam and realized my mistake.....so spent the next while unsewing. 

Once that was done, it was off to the races!

All you do now is sew and sew and sew.  You take each end of the strip and sew it together.  When you get to the end, just cut the strip.  Sounds strange but when you get to this point, you'll know what I mean.  Then you take the two ends and sew it together again.  You just pedal to the metal and sew.  Here is my result.

Kind of cool huh?  It's pretty colourful, not really my style but now there is one less jelly roll in my stash!

When I was at the Fraser Valley Quilt Show, I chatted with one of the ladies doing a demo on applique using a toothpick to turn under the edges.  She was working on a Hawaiian block and it was spectacular.  I watched her for about 10 minutes and that 10 minutes is etched in my brain.  I had to give it a try!  So off to the Sechelt fabric shop and look what I found!!!!!

I loosely cut them out, leaving some of the black background.  When one of my son's looked at it his comment was......"yup, you were on the Sunshine Coast alright!  Looks like it walked right out of a granola shop!"

I am very happy with it now! 

At this point, you will notice that there has been no comment about the Challenge????  I'm getting to it but my blogging time has run out, so I'll have to post about it later.  I'll leave you, in anticipation, with this shot.



CHEERS!