Well the graduation has come and gone; so I can share with you the gift I spoke of last week. I was told by her mother that she really likes purple and yellow. I leaned heavily on purple with other cool colors, and added as many yellow or yellow green accents as I could.

     I got this idea during the last retreat when we did the jelly roll race. Although I love quilts that are planned out and have intricate and organized designs; there is a part of me that is fascinated by random, and just being entertained by how things hit on their own. Instead of working with 2 1/2" strips, I made a group of 1 1/2" strips. I shot for 40 strips, but that is approximate since I didn't hesitate to add a few partial strips if the fabric I wanted to use happened to be a fat quarter, or have a piece cut off. I made these strips all out of striped fabric. I sewed them end to end as you would for a jelly roll quilt.

     I made another group of strips that were 3 1/2" wide. Again I tried for 40 strips, but I cut them all in half and mixed them up, before I sewed them end to end. These strip were all batiks. 

     So, I had 2 very long strips, one that was 3 1/2" wide, and the other which was 1 1/2" wide; and I sewed the narrow strip to the side of the wider strip. Whew! That was a really long seam. The narrow strip ran out sooner than the wider strip, so I just cut the wider strip at the end of the narrow strip, and saved it in case I wanted to use it for a border later

     Next, I cut that extremely long strip in half and sewed the 2 pieces again side to side. I couldn't just fold it in half as you would normally do for a jelly roll quilt, because that caused the 2 sides of the same width strip to be next to each other. 

I had to find the center: cut it in half; and flip one of the strips, if I wanted to alternate the narrow strips with the wide strips. I just repeated that step until I got a size that would make a nice lap quilt. Actually it turned out closer to a twin. It is not at hand right at the moment, and I am trying to remember the size. I think it was something like 65" by 87". I used the extra wide strip that I cut off earlier to put one more wide strip on the side that finished in the narrow strip, then I used it to go across the top and bottom acros the ends of the quilt. Here is a photo of the quilt top.

I took the above photo before I added the wide strip across the top and bottom of the quilt. I think she really liked it. I gave it to her, but I took it back so I could quilt it for her. I don't often machine quilt things myself, but I am thinking this might be a good one for me to hone my machine quilting skills on; since I could just zig zag in the strips.

     Too bad I didn't get a photo of the proud graduate with the quilt! I will have to remember to do that after it is quilted and bound. That's all I have to share today. Thanks for stopping by!