the one about stripping

I kept playing outside my comfort zone yesterday. I'm about two years behind the trend, but I decided to give jelly roll racing a try. [If you aren't familiar with them, search google. There are stacks of tutorials and sample quilts.] I didn't have a complete jelly roll nor was I convinced that it would turn out well, but I forged ahead.  I had about half of Lu Summers' Summersville jelly roll left over from another project. I thought the white background and monochromatic strips would play nice. I raced on. It was only half a jelly roll, so it was more of a sprint than a race... 

After my first row of sewing, I questioned what I got myself into. Frankly I wasn't enjoying sew miles of 2 1/2" strips together. Thank god it was only a partial jelly roll. As I finished the second run, the cursing started. 

I'd ran out of bobbin thread... miles ago... two feet into a mega join. #EpicJellyRollRaceFail.  The process that I wasn't enjoying had suddenly got longer. That's a whole lot of jelly roll strips to re-sew. I raced on. I realized that I was supposed to be paying more attention as I flipped and sewed. My mind drifted with the certainty that I'd end up with an unusable blob.

And then slowly I found my zone. The rows grew quickly and the sewing became more like meditation. Before I knew it, I had a small cot or pram quilt top.  I made peace with the piecing, and I think the monochromatic Summersville prints would look good on a pram. That said, I've run my last race. I'm hanging up my my jelly roll strips and retiring....

Today, I moved on to other strips. With the aid of my Sizzix, I churned out about 30 yards of binding today. The beauts above are now all pressed, zigzagged and ready to go. I'll keep some at home and send along a bit for the quilt drive that I mentioned yesterday.

I've made a massive dent in my stash this week working outside of my comfort zone. It's just as well as I'm sure I'll fill those shelves right up when we visit San Francisco.