Monday, December 10, 2018

Jolly Bar Meringue Quilt

**I was compensated for this post by Fat Quarter Shop and affiliate links are present.

Welcome! Today is all about the Half Square Rectangle, the lesser known sibling to the Half Square Triangle. Fat Quarter Shop, Grade A-quality quilt shop and home to an extensive library of free patterns complete with excellent video tutorials, is blog hop hosting the Jolly Bar Meringue Shortcut Quilt.


Jolly Bars are 5" x 10" precuts, of which Fat Quarter Shop has a nice selection. Another possibility is to take a Layer Cake you love and cut it once down the middle.


The Jolly Bar Meringue Quilt is part of the Shortcut Quilt Series. Fat Quarter Shop has an entire playlist of tutorials for these quick to assemble quilts.

Fat Quarter Shop makes it so very easy to get your quilt up and running with a Jolly Bar Meringue Quilt kit featuring All Weather Friend by April Rosenthal and coordinating 3 1/4 yard backing setThe kit includes the pattern, fabric for the 48.5" x 48.5" top and binding, and the Creative Grids 9.5" Perfect Rectangle Ruler.


If you forgo the kit, you'll need the Creative Grids 9 1/2" Perfect Rectangle Ruler so you can easily cut those lovely angled corners, one print Jolly Bar, one solid Jolly Bar, 5/8 yard binding, and 3 1/4 yards backing.


I used a Pepper & Flax Jolly Bar, but instead of a solid Jolly Bar, I cut 5" x 10" rectangles from
Grunge Basics Pear yardage. However, if you are using yardage instead of a Jolly Bar for the solid fabric, make sure you cut 5" x 10" rectangles, and then stack them all right side up before using your ruler. If not, half your pieces will not be oriented correctly.


After I sewed each print triangle to a Grunge triangle, I paired the identical Half Square Rectangles side by side so they could be chained through all in one sitting.


My design wall was a huge help, as I wanted my arrangement to look random, but to have the colors nicely balanced.


My Aurifil thread card with real thread is my indispensable resource for deciding which threads to use for quilting. 


I chose all 50wt. #2021 Natural White#2130 Medium Butter#2615 Aluminum#5004 Grey Smoke, and #2886 Light Avocado were wonderful matches for Pepper & Flax, as I wanted the quilting texture to be noticeable, rather than the lines of stitching. 


The quilting was completed entirely on my domestic machine, and is a combination of ruler work and free-motion. I marked the middle of the shorter sides of the printed triangles and stitched from the smallest angle to the marked mid-point. I then filled in the half along the diagonal with radiating curves, a braid, figure eights, or ribbon candy. Each color got a different design in a matching thread color to keep things fresh. Within the green triangles, I divided the longest, non-diagonal side in half. I drew a line from this point to the corner. The more stout triangle was given straight lines spaced 1/4" and 1" alternately.


I pulled a buttercream yellow (Technicolor Leaf in Sun by Emily Herrick for Michael Miller) from my color-sorted stash to compliment the yellows in Pepper & Flax, but any of the yardage from Corey Yoder's presently available collection would be perfect.


While the pattern calls for a 6 x 6 square arrangement of blocks, I went with one fewer block and a 5 x 7 rectangular arrangement.


Check out all the other versions of the Meringue quilt on social media under the hashtags #fqsquiltalong, #shortcutquilt and #jollybarmeringuequilt and on the Jolly Jabber blog post. If you're visiting from FQS, I'd love if you'd subscribe to my feed via e-mail (sidebar) or Bloglovin' because I'll be having all kinds of other fun projects and inspiration coming soon.


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5 comments:

  1. This is such a lovely softer version of this quilt , perfect choice for the binding, and now there is another ruler I want. I have so many ideas for half rectangle quilts floating around in my head but I have always been reluctant to make them. I think this is just the ticket.

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  2. HRTs seem a lot more daunting that HSTs, and your points look great, Afton. The ruler seems really handy for matching things up just right. Also, light avocado as a color has me thinking of breakfast... mmmm....

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  3. I just love everything about this quilt! I love the green grunge and the quilting is especially wonderful to highlight the shapes in this quilt.

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  4. Love checking out all the different versions! I love the green grunge with it.

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  5. Sweet quilt--thanks for the tutorial. My recent quilt was based on HRT, and I love how versatile they are.

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