Palm Canyon Ripples

Today I'm sharing the newest shortcut quilt from the Fat Quarter Shop: Jelly Roll Ripples. I fell in love with the Palm Canyon collection the first time I saw it, so it was easy to pick the fabric for this quilt. The Fat Quarter Shop even suggested coordinating solids for the collection so it was easy to pick one of those as well - Kona Ultra Marine. Finally, I picked Widescreen in Geranium by Carolyn Friedlander to go on the back because it reminded me of the background of the palm tree fabrics in collection.

This is a jelly roll pattern so the cutting goes very quickly. I've never made a log cabin block before, but I pieced them in pairs so I could chain piece all the parts and they went together quickly as well. The biggest problem I had was letting go of directionality - normally I try very hard to make all pieces go in the same direction, but with a jelly roll you don't have that freedom. In the bird fabric below, I used some of the extra to piece the longer strip so I didn't have a sideways bird. For the diamond fabric, however, I had to just let it go and go with what I had.

Speaking of cutting, I liked how each block used almost an entire jelly roll strip; I was left with about mini charm pack of leftover fabric. Some of these bits have already made their way into my temperature quilt!

Once I had all the blocks sewn together it was time to do something else I had never done before: a plain solid border. I did shrink it down; the pattern calls for a 6.5 inch border and mine was only 2.5 inches.

I quilted this with an all-over pattern called Daisy from the book Free Motion Quilting 1-2-3 by Lori Kennedy. It's a combination of quarter spirals and daisies. It's easier to see the pattern on the back of the quilt.

I bound the quilt with the Cactus Palm Hatch print and it might be my new favorite binding fabric. It's stripey without being stripes. Lots of fun! And it comes in several different colors. This whole quilt had me thinking tropical drinks, sunshine, and beaches, so I decided to bring it to our local beach to take a picture of it.