Coasters: Mini Jellyroll Race
When my friends get married I try to make them something that is useful and matches their wedding colors. Sometimes it’s placemats or potholders or coasters—it all depends on how much time I have.
My friend from high school, Crystal, got married this fall. Her colors were blue and green—more specifically Playacar Blue and Emerald Green. I had to look up the specific colors and then went through my stash of fat quarters.
I chose these pieces because the matched her colors (as close as I could find). I bought these when I was in high school and still working at JoAnn’s Fabric and Crafts. It seemed fitting that I use material that I bought when we were first friends. When I bought the green material with words on it, I had no idea I’d be using it in a wedding gift about six years later. It’s perfect though: Stability, Family, Strength, Love, and more. All of these words are ones I would use to describe Crystal and her relationship with Peter. It’s also fitting because in high school, she was one of my writing buddies. She and I shared a love for writing fantasy.
For these coasters I applied I method I’d used for baby quilts before: Jellyroll Race. Our secretary at school told me about this way of quilting a few years ago before I started sewing with her and the other ladies in our quilting group. The idea is that you take a Jellyroll (a tightly rolled collection of coordinating fabric strips) and sew them together in a particular way. I say, why can’t you apply the method to a smaller scale?
I cut 1 ½-inch strips out of the materials I chose and laid them out together. One of the strips has to be significantly shorter so the seams don’t line up perfectly.
Then you sew the short ends together.
You end up with one really long snake of material.
Press the seams. I like to go to one side, but you can do whatever you like. It doesn’t make much of a difference because you’re not trying to make perfect corners.
Then you start sewing the long sides together, like a hotdog bun.
After you get one of those done, you cut the folded end and press it again. Repeat this until you get your desired width. I only did it twice because that gave me a nice width for coasters. When you’re making a quilt this way you go until you have a nice rectangle.
In my book, coasters get one layer of batting.
For the quilting I stitched in the ditch with different stitches on my machine.
The binding is the same method as used in Triangle Practice: Potholders. It’s my current favorite method.
I made four coasters for Crystal and was really pleased with how they turned out. If I did it again I would be a little more thoughtful about how I sewed the different strips together so there wouldn’t be two green coasters and two blue coasters. Using a different material for the backing of each one helps tie it altogether though because it allowed me to use the color that wasn’t as present.
What Crystal doesn’t know about these coasters is that I spent the entire morning making them for her on her wedding day. The whole time I worked on them I thought about all of the fun we had in high school and how happy I could tell Peter made her when I first met him.
And on my way to her wedding, two trains stopped me. TWO trains. Very slow moving trains. They made me so late that I couldn’t get myself to go into the ceremony, even though the ceremony is my favorite part of a wedding day. I drove by the church and went straight to the reception—where I forgot to sign the guest book because I was so flustered (and early). And I was mad because her's was the first wedding I had missed since college, and it wasn't because she lived far away or I had a prior engagement. Her's was the only local wedding I've been to since my cousin's wedding a couple years ago. I delivered the coasters though, and got to hug the bride after I didn’t catch the bouquet. All good things that made up for frustrating trains.
Congratulations, again, Crystal and Peter! I know that with your combined creativity you'll do amazing things. I can't wait to see what's next for you both!
