jelly roll rug

I couldn't resist any longer and hopped on the jelly roll rug bandwagon this weekend :). 

Don't you just love when humble strips of fabric and some batting become a super adorable as well as practical decor? Yep, projects like this are my favorite.

The pattern by Roma Quilts calls for a jelly roll of fabric but I cut my own 2.5'' strips of fabric from my stash since I don't own any jelly rolls. I went back and forth on what prints to choose a lot, of course. I was a bit tempted to go super colorful but in the end I chose a very neutral, mostly low volume color palette as I knew this kind of rug would fit into our apartment the best.

The thing I enjoyed the most was the "yarn" making stage. Such a genius way to combine fabric and strips of batting into one continuous ball of yarn. Pretty cool, isn't it? Seeing these fabulous giant balls of yarn on IG is what actually drew me to this pattern in the first place.

A little note about batting: I joined my batting strips by simply placing the two short edges next to each other (making sure they are touching but not overlapping) and using a zig-zag stitch on my machine to stitch them together (the pattern recommends batting tape which I didn't have on hand). If, however, you're not keen on cutting and joining long strips of batting together, you can now buy rolls of already precut batting. A bit more pricey option, but definitely very convenient.

When starting this project I was a bit worried the rug would not lay flat after I stitched it all together. After all, these strips are not cut on bias and we all know how messy things can get when straight strips of fabric are sewn around curved objects :(

Thankfully though there are quite a few very useful tutorials online providing lots of tips on how to ensure one ends up with a beautifully flat rug. As you can see from the photo above I used the extension table for my sewing machine and I added books all around it to make a large flat surface for the rug to sit on during stitching.

Another great tip was to take the rug off the machine when any waving (or curving) occurred and use hot iron and lots of steam to make it flat. I had to do this a few times and I'm happy to say it worked every time. The key here is not to wait until you finish the whole rug. Press it as soon as any curving happens to prevent more distortion later on.

Here it is all finished. Super soft, squishy, and beautifully flat, yay!

The kitties sure love it :)

All in all this was a super fun and satisfying project and I'll be definitely making more rugs in the future.

Svetlana