The Jolly Bar Book Sew Along Quilt

 It's been such an awful long time since I've posted.    I've been busy with my mother-in-law for about 2 weeks in October.  She had surgery and needed help; so I went down.  When I left, she had a full freezer and was doing remarkably well.  Her progress, according to her reports, continues and she feels surgery was a success.  Although I got no sewing done at all during that time, I did get caught up on a cross-stitch project I'm working on. More on that at another time though.  I found my sewing mojo suffering since last I wrote.  Covid has really affected the moods of many sewers out there.  Luckily, I had a deadline for this quilt. 

I've been working on this quilt since June.  It's part of one of  Pat Sloan's Sew Along quilts.  This one was sponsored by Fat Quarter Shop and featured The Jolly Bar Book, Vol. 2 available here.

The quilt features blocks from the book, following instructions from the Quilt Along for number of blocks to be sewn and placement.  I really enjoyed this sew along.  The blocks were all so fun.  

I used a plaid in charcoal gray and white.  I couldn't match the plaid confidently for the back, so I pieced a line of blocks using leftover squares from the jolly bar.  By the way, in case you're not familiar  with a jolly bar, it's a Fat Quarter shop exclusive that measures 5 in. x 10 in. and includes 20 cuts.  Obviously you could just use ½ of a layer cake instead.  I found this a fun size to work with.

I really like how nicely the back came out.  Since the quilt is a gift, for my boss--it's her first baby, I included a pre-printed label and added the date as shown.  I got the labels from an Etsy shop but don't have the info any longer.  I really hope she likes the quilt.

I really enjoy the piecing part of quilting.  I find I rather dread the quilting part, because I'm still learning to free motion quilt.  But that's getting better with practice and the acquisition of the Janome 6300P.  It's made for quilting:  an accurate ¼ inch seam foot and a larger harp space than my Brother machine.