Short answer: Almost!
I've had this Merry Happy jelly roll waiting for the right project since February, when I won it at QuiltCon. You know how it is when you have a bundle of fabric that's just too good to use on the wrong thing?
Then I started thinking about Star Dots. Star Dots is a jelly roll friendly quilt pattern, so this seemed like the perfect match. And then, of course, I had to turn it into a little experiment:
Could I make the entire baby size Star Dots quilt from ONE jelly roll?
There was only one way to find out.
What's actually in the jelly roll?
Once I finally opened the Merry Happy jelly roll and sorted through all the strips, I realized I was very close. There was just about enough fabric for the colorful background of the baby quilt – but not quite enough to make the stars as well.
So I decided to use the jelly roll for the background and supplement it with light and low volume fabrics for the stars. I already had some Ruby Star Society fabrics in my stash that worked really well with the collection, including Starry.
Not quite a one-jelly-roll quilt, then. But pretty close!
Random or colorwash?
My first thought was to scatter all the colors randomly across the quilt. But there was quite a big difference in value between the darkest greens and the lighter yellows and aquas. If I mixed everything completely randomly, some of my light stars would have very little contrast against parts of the background – and start disappearing into the quilt.
And I really wanted those stars to show!
So instead, I decided to arrange the fabrics in an ombré / colorwash, moving from dark green through turquoise and aqua, into yellow, then pink and finally red. And suddenly my Christmas jelly roll was starting to look a little bit like a rainbow.
Merry Happy is technically a Christmas collection, but that's one of the things I love about it. The colors are so bright and playful that I don't think they have to be used only for Christmas at all.
Making the gradient work
I started this quilt at the cabin, without a design wall. So I cut all my colored strips into squares and added the star points I needed in a selection of the different fabrics.
It wasn't until I got home that I could spread everything out on the design wall and find out whether my colorwash idea would actually work.
This part took some fiddling. I had fewer yellow squares than most of the other colors – and yellow needed to sit roughly in the middle to create a smooth transition from the cooler greens and aquas to the warmer pinks and reds.
There was a LOT of moving squares around, but eventually it worked!
If you want to try something similar, my biggest tip is to let the colors overlap. A few turquoise pieces can wander into the green. A little pink can sneak into the yellow. Some squares should probably sit in a place that feels just slightly “wrong”. Because if the color changes are too orderly, it's easy to end up with obvious diagonal stripes instead of a gradual wash. Mixing the edges makes the transition much softer.
Value matters, too
There's another reason I chose the colorwash instead of distributing all the jelly roll fabrics randomly: contrast.
If you want the stars in Star Dots to stand out clearly, it helps if there isn't too much value contrast within the background itself. Value is more important than color!
My stars are made from light and low volume fabrics. Against the dark green, turquoise, pink and red fabrics, they stand out beautifully. Against the palest yellow and aqua fabrics? Not quite as much.
But by grouping the colors rather than scattering them randomly, the light colors become part of the overall colorwash instead of appearing as isolated squares where the stars suddenly disappear. And because the stars are evenly distributed, our brain perceives them even where there is less contrast to the background – as long as the contrast between star and background is greater than the contrast within the background.
Of course, this is completely a matter of taste! But when I'm choosing fabrics for a scrappy quilt, I usually like to make a few deliberate choices that help the main motif stand out.
Read my best tips for choosing fabrics for scrappy quilts in this blog post.
Web piecing the quilt top
Once I was happy with the layout, I web pieced the quilt top in two large sections.
I could have web pieced the entire top as one piece, but I prefer working in sections where each row is narrow enough to fit comfortably on my ironing board. It makes pressing much easier. Read my tips for pressing when web piecing in this blog post.
Then I simply sewed the two sections together – and voilà! One very colorful Star Dots quilt top! It's now on its way to the longarmer and I can't wait to share the final result!
So: Is one jelly roll enough?
For the Star Dots baby size as written in the pattern?
Almost – but not quite.
You'll need to supplement your jelly roll with a little extra fabric. Whether that's light or dark will depend on the jelly roll you're using, how the values are distributed, and which fabrics you choose for the stars and background.
But the Star Dots baby quilt isn't a tiny stroller quilt. It's a generously sized baby quilt (46"x54" / 117x137 cm) that's also great as a play mat on the floor.
So if you really want to make Star Dots from only one jelly roll, there's a simple solution: make it a little smaller!
Or do what I did, pull a few coordinating fabrics from your stash, and make the full baby size.