varsity jolly bar quilt + giveaway

hello and welcome!

today I am excited to share my Varsity Jolly Bar quilt with you…
thanks to Fat Quarter Shop for including me in the blog tour…
before we get started…I thought I would share a bit of my design process with you…
since Varsity is a sport themed fabric line, I wanted a design like pom poms…then I couldn’t bear to toss the pieces of leftover Jolly Bars, so I made a sashing and offset the blocks…
I hope you enjoy my project…

a Jolly Bar is an exclusive Moda precut for the Fat Quarter Shop

to make this quilt…
in addition to the Jolly Bar, you will need…
1/2 yard of a creme – I used Kona Snow
1 yard for the back
36 x 43 inch piece of batting
the finished size is about 33.5 x 40.5
block size is 11 3/4 inches

begin by cutting the entire set of Jolly Bars in half lengthwise – 2.5 inch strips
cut four 4 inch strips WOF of the creme and sub-cut into 36 four inch squares

for each block, you will need four 4 inch squares and six 2.5 inch Jolly Bar strips – two of three different prints

this block is constructed similar to a half log cabin
begin by placing two of the square on two of the Jolly Bar strips and sew as pictured above

select another strip and place the unit right sides together as pictured and sew
trim off the excess Jolly Bar, but save this piece
these little pieces are used later
repeat these steps for the other squares and strips

here is how I laid out my block
I like the strips off setting eachother
I sew two blocks into pairs and then repeat for the other two
I pressed toward the un-pieced strip side, so they interlock when sewing the block together
sew the block together and press the seam as desired
repeat all of these steps for each block, so for my quilt, I made 9 blocks

here are my nine blocks all laid out in a pleasing order
notice that I chose to offset them for interest

remember all these little pieces you trimmed off?
I used these to make the 2.5 inch sashing strips
I sewed four pieces together for each sashing

this gives you a rough idea about how the finished piece will look
at this point, all the pieces have yet to be sewn together

I sewed the sashing pieces together first and pressed them

I then sewed the blocks into rows and the rows together
pictured above is the completed top

sandwich a back and batting with the top
baste as desired and quilt
I used my walking foot and did narrow curvy quilting

I had 12 Jolly Bar strips left over
I actually had a bit more but had a sewing error with one of my blocks!
I sewed these strips together end to end to form one long piece of binding

sew binding onto the quilt and either machine or hand-sew it to the back
in the above photo you can see my variety of prints for the binding

finished project is ready to enjoy!

if you would like a PDF of this tutorial….
leave me a comment or email me – brooke@sillymamaquilts.com
I did add a couple of possible variations in the PDF….

and now for the fun….
leave a comment here to win a Jolly Bar of your choice…
compliments of Fat Quarter Shop!!!
be sure to head over to the Fat Quarter’s blog to see other Jolly Bar projects…

thanks so much for reading along…
Happy Sewing!