Tube Quilting with Jelly Rolls

Tube quilting is a method of quilting that allows you to accurately create blocks such as half-square triangles from strips of fabric. It's also a fun way to use up some precut strips of fabric. So this is a jelly roll that I have already started using. That's why it's unrolled. But jelly rolls are generally strips of two-and-a-half-inch-wide fabrics by about 42 inches. And then they can be a collection of a bunch of the same color of fabrics or fabrics of different colors or from a different collection. So we're gonna use some two-and-a-half-inch jelly roll strips today to make some half-square triangles. And then an extra block here at the end. And do it using a method known as tube quilting. So the first thing you have to do with tube quilting is you're going to need two pieces of fabric. So for a half-square triangle, generally you have two pieces of fabric that are different prints. So here is one print from my jelly roll. Let me go ahead and grab. These two are different. We'll use these two right here. So here are two different prints from our jelly roll fabric. What I wanna do is I wanna take and lay these together, right sides together. Then I'm gonna take this over to my machine and I'm gonna stitch using my quarter inch seam allowance. And I'm gonna stitch on both sides, essentially creating a tube. Got my edges lined up just under my presser foot. Go ahead and stitch. So the longer the strip that you're using, the more of the half-square triangle or the more of the units that you can create from the strips. So I actually just took one of my jelly roll strips and cut it in half. So this is closer to about 21, 22 inches than it is 40 inches. So my pieces weren't exactly the same length. I'm not super worried about that, but once I get to the end here, I do want to stitch the other side of my pieces as well, essentially creating my tube. So I'm just going to take it. Not even take it entirely off the machine or clip the thread. Just spin it around. And now I'm gonna go ahead and stitch on the other side as well. All right. Now I've stitched down both sides of my strips of fabric. I can go ahead and trim off these extra little pieces of thread. And now is where the fun part happens, because we have essentially a stitched this into a tube that, unless we're gonna turn it right side out and use it for a strap of some kind. We really can't do anything with it as is. What we need to do now is some cutting. So you're gonna wanna have a ruler that has a 45-degree line on it. And you want to have the half of the ruler from the 45-degree line down longer than your fabric is. So for me, since I'm using two-and-a-half-inch strips of fabric, this little six and a half-inch ruler is plenty big enough for me. If I was doing much wider strips of fabric, I would want a larger square ruler. What I'm gonna do is I'm going to take my ruler. I'm lining this 45-degree line up right along the seam line I just stitched on the top. I'm gonna go ahead and take my rotary cutter and cut off this corner. This gives me a starting area. So this little corner that I just cut off is extra. So it's actually the edge where my fabric didn't line up completely well anyway, so it's just a little throwaway piece. Now I want to take my ruler and I have my 45-degree line lined up along the seam line on the top. I'm now going to take and move my ruler down. So my 45-degree line is now lined up along the seam line here on the bottom. Go ahead and take my rotary cutter and cut. And you can see from here. Now, if I open up this piece, I have a perfect little half-square triangle. Now I can continue cutting and creating more half-square triangles by simply taking my ruler, moving it back up to lining that 45 degree-line up along the upper line that I stitched. Go ahead and cut. Set that aside. Can bring it down now to the bottom. Again, lining that 45-degree line up on the bottom. Go ahead and cut. And just like that, I am quickly and easily cutting out mini half-square triangles that are all the exact same size. So how many half-square triangles you get depend on how long of strips you had. So you can see, I still have enough of strip that I could keep going and keep cutting. And again, have a bunch of half-square triangles that all come out to the same size. So, again, this can be done with just two-and-a-half-inch strips of fabric using jelly rolls, or you can use wider strips or you can do a combination of two-and-a-half-inch jelly roll strips and a background fabric to create a different look. So here I have just taken two strips of jelly rolls. I have lined them up with right sides together and I've stitched them together. So I've got a much larger piece. I then stitched that with right sides together with a backing or background fabric piece that is the same width, but is made from one single piece of fabric. I can use the exact same technique now that I just did to cut more units. Again, I'm going to start with my 45 degree line lined up along the upper seam line that I stitched. I'm going to cut this away again. Again, this is my starting side. So this is a throwaway piece here. I'm going to take my ruler. Now I'm going to line it up along the lower seam line. Again, that 45-degree line is on that lower seam line. And now when I had mentioned that the thickness of strip you're using will dictate what size of square ruler you're using. You can see here that my six-and-a-half-inch ruler is just barely long enough to be able to cut this. So if your strips are any wider than this, again, you're going to need a larger sized square ruler. So I can make that cut there. If I wanted to continue going. Again, I just go back and forth lining my 45-degree line up with the upper, lower, upper, lower. Moving it right along. But you can see now, rather than creating that half-square triangle. I've created another fun block where half of my square is created from those two strips of the jelly roll and the other half is created from my background fabric. So if I were to make a bunch of these, I could place them together and easily create another fun block, such as this one here. We even have an extra square. And put all sorts of fun blocks together, just quickly and easily by creating this tube. Now I am right-handed. So this is how I create this tube is I start cutting from the right-hand side and moving my way down. If you are left-handed, the technique is still exactly the same, but you're just going to start on a different side. So I'm just gonna demonstrate the ruler placement. Cause I don't think anyone wants to see me cutting with my left hand. But so rather than starting on the right-hand side and cutting off here, I would simply start on the left-hand side. Use my rotary cutter, cut right along here again. That is my trash square or my starting square. I would then move it down to the left or to the bottom and cut here. And then this would become my half-square triangle. So you can do this technique whether you're right or left-handed. It just depends on what side of the tube you start on. So next time you wanna use up some jelly rolls and you either wanna make a bunch of half square triangles or even some more complicated blocks. Try out this tube quilting method and create a bunch of half square triangles all at the same time.