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Rainbow Inside Out Quilt

by Alisa

I recently made a small quilt for myself! I saw this Instagram post by Kelly of @jeliquilts back in the Spring and I just fell in love. The inspiration is much more beautiful -- and quilterly -- than mine. I immediately went looking for that rainbow fabric.

It is a Kona Cotton jelly roll from 2017 that was a tricky to find. I found the Kona Cotton New Bright Palette Rollup on an Etsy shop where it is now sold out. Missouri Star still has it on their site as "out of stock" so I do have hope they will restock. Meanwhile, the charm packs are available.

If you are searching for this, be aware that there is a Kona Brights Palette with a slightly different color selection. I love this Kona New Bright one, but I'm sure there are tons of solids that would look just as lovely.

My original plan was to sew 30 of the strips in the 41 strip pack together to get a 42 x 60-inch center panel and then border that six-inches all around and end up around 54 x 72-inches, and then send it out for quilting in an overall pattern. But then reality set in.

I started by removing 11 strips from the jelly roll -- all of the duplicates plus a few of colors that I didn't love. I then proceeded to sew those strips together lengthwise in the order they came off the roll. Because I was keen to maintain the ombre effect with minimal effort, I simply sewed them one after another starting at the same end. The result was a crazy-looking top that was bowed down the center and wildly ragged on the right side due to differing lengths of the strips. Next time I would rotate the starting end to limit the bowing and would probably sew them together in smaller sections and then join those together.  

Moving on! Over a couple of sessions where I tried various ways to find the straightest section I trimmed the top down to a 35" wide rectangle. I then removed three of the strips -- one of the pinks at the top and two of the indigo at the bottom -- to end up with a 35 x 56.5-inch quilt top.

While I had the top lying around for several days contemplating border and backing options, I started to notice that the back side of the top was particularly cute with the pinked edges of the strips ruffling out. Question: How bad of a quilter I would be if I put it together inside out? Answer: No worse than I already am!

With that decision made, I decided to skip bordering it as well and backed it with the Peony color from the Kona Solids line. I matched that color from the jelly roll using this nifty Kona solids color chart that I borrowed ages ago from my Mom. It is printed on fabric!


Since the quilt was now much smaller than planned, I could more easily quilt it myself. I decided on a simple horizontal line of stitching three centimeters from each seam which left a center channel on each color of about four centimeters.

I then turned it over to my fabulous mother -- Linda Theil. She bound it using several light grey patterned fabrics from her stash and tucked a few of my custom labels from Border City Quilts on Etsy around the edge.

I love how it turned out, it is a great splash of color in my neutral home and it was very fun and simple to make!  




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