A Great 'Jelly Roll' Weekend

Gosh! I am excelling myself with 'Blog' posts! Yet another great weekend hosting the 'Jelly Roll' Sewing group of ladies on the farm.  Where did 'Jelly Roll' come from you might be thinking ..... Nothing to do with 'The Jelly Roll Blues' or the American Rapper, Jelly Roll! In the sewing and quilting world, a Jelly Roll is a collection of fabric strips, approximately 40, rolled together to make a bundle.  These are great pre-cuts for lots of quilting designs, consisting of a variety of designs within one collection of fabrics.

Jelly Roll landed on Friday morning - Debbie, Jackie, Sarah, Wendy, Sue and last but not least Pauline. Both Sue and Pauline travelled a long way for the gathering, Cheltenham and Oxfordshire respectively! 

Within half an hour, the workroom was full of sewing activity. 

Jackie, pictured above owns a beautiful big Brother Sewing Machine which makes beeping noises ever so often, a highly technical piece of engineering.  Jackie was 'away with the Fairies' at the weekend, making a beautiful fairy lap quilt for her relation, all from scratch.  Jackie almost finished this with only the binding left to hand sew.  Lucky relative! 

Jackie and Debbie sussing the job out!

Next on Jackie's agenda was to machine quilt a gorgeous appliqued baby quilt for her new Grand Daughter, Nancy. Lovely work, with just the binding left to do.

Debbie was working on a quilt for her Grand Daughter as well. Lots of work done on this over the weekend to include sandwiching the quilt together, machine quilting and patiently tying in ends and sewing them through.  A labour of love but the end result when the binding goes on is going to be amazing! 

Look at this co-ordinated backing fabric, beautiful!!

Lovely for a little Girl's Bedroom

Close up shot of Debbie's quilt - Love these fabrics, great choice.

Sarah, concentrates on doing much of her sewing work by hand.  When I first met Sarah last year, she was working on a baby quilt involving lots of hand turned applique of Noah's Ark. I was in awe!! What an amazing piece!

Sarah worked on several projects at the weekend and finished a half square triangle quilt in blues, with the back of this quilt just as lovely as the front.

The Front

The Back

More hand sewing - Beautiful work!

Wowsers!!

Double Wowsers Sarah!!

Wendy sandwiched a beautiful large blue quilt, done in Janet Clare fabric, a favourite designer of mine.  She made some beautiful matching cushions to go with this quilt as well.

Our Dining Room table and our Snooker table are both great spaces for working with large quilts.  This is lovely!

Debbie, Jackie, Sarah and Wendy are regulars on our Retreat weekends.  We always love to see them.  It was a pleasure to meet Pauline and Sue for the first time, also Jelly Roll group members.

A beautiful piece designed by Pauline, inspired by a dove design on one of the fabrics that she is using for her piece.  Another labour of love! All hand sewn, amazing!

Love the colour combo and what a fab design!

Sue made her quilt all in one, known as 'quilt as you go'. This was very interesting to see how this came together and a very neat and tidy job.

Nice one Sue!

Just look at these colours!!

Of course, Jelly Roll did not work hard all weekend!! On Friday night they went out to watch 'Military Wives' at the Cinema.  Sarah also sang there with the Culdrose Military Wives Choir and contributed towards raising funds for Charity.  

Our retreat tradition is of course our BBQ night in the unique 'Cornish Piskey Hut'. What fun we had in there, around the fire pit, with lots of laughter and mischief, with Debbie taking charge of the Clotted Cream.

Debbie! You can't beat a bit of Clotted Cream on Fruit Salad!

This is a man's job ! Henry in charge as per norm of the BBQ, and out numbered by females!

Lovely and warm in the hut

Then it was Sunday, 4 pm and time to pack up and go home. This was sad, as this was the final Sewing Retreat of the season. We will resume in the autumn which we are all looking forward to.