Flour Sack Shake-Up

Hello!  Today I am sharing the latest shortcut quilt from The Fat Quarter Shop: The Jolly Bar Bakewell Quilt!  A jolly bar is a pre-cut that measures 5x10 inches, halfway between a charm pack and a layer cake.  This pattern is very adaptable - each jolly bar piece is enough for 1.5 blocks, meaning you could also make the pattern from two sets of charm squares.  If you wanted a bigger quilt, a jelly roll or layer cake would give you three times as many blocks.  I love all the interesting shapes that the solid fabric makes on this quilt.  Only the large squares need to match up perfectly so it's a very forgiving pattern if you are new to quilting!

This quilt is made up of 20 blocks and true to its promise, it went together very quickly - I had the top pieced, basted, and quilted in under a week.  I'm not a big border fan and I don't need a baby quilt right now, so I left the borders off and am calling it a doll quilt for a lucky little birthday girl (my version measures 32x40).  All of the print fabrics are by Me and My Sister Designs - a Jolly Bar of Flour Sacks for the front and yardage in White and Purple Tweet from the Good Day for the back.  I like both high contrast and shiny new things, so I used Kona Enchanted, the color of the year, for my negative space and binding.  I was a little worried about how the lime green would look against it, but those ended up being my favorite parts of the quilt!

For the quilting I decided to use my favorite motif, spirals, but make them much bigger than what I normally do.  I used Sulky thread in Dark Rose because it disappeared into all the fabrics.  I got trapped in a couple of spots, but overall I'm happy with how it looks.

Many thanks to the Fat Quarter Shop for letting me participate in this fun quilt-along and my local conservatory for all the fun pictures!