Jiggle-Joggle-Jee Quilt

Jiggle-Joggle-Jee Quilt, 43" X 43"

When Kristy @quietplay invited me to use her new Create fabric collection by Riley Blake...

...to design a project, I headed to EQ8 to come up with this foundation paper-pieced design. 

The quilt name comes from a repeated phrase in the poem The Baby Goes to Boston.

What does the train say? Jiggle-joggle-jiggle-joggle

What does the train say? Jiggle-joggle-jee

The quilt's jiggle-joggle-looking bars made me remember that nursery rhyme. 

Here's the free pattern, and/or keep reading below for the quilt tutorial.  

Download Jiggle-Joggle-Jee quilt pattern and foundation papers

Jiggle-Joggle-Jee Tutorial

Note: The supply list and cutting instructions are also on the printed quilt pattern. 

Supplies – all fabrics should be 100% cotton; yardages based on 40"-width

• 25 different fat eighth prints: I used Riley Blake Designs Create collection for 61 blocks
• 1⅔ yard background fabric: I used Riley Blake Designs Bee Background Cross Stitch Gray
• 12"-long Add-A-Quarter Ruler
• ⅓ yard, for 2¼”-wide binding
• 2½ yards backing fabric
• 1 quilt batt (approx. 47" X 47”)
• thread

Foundation Paper for Piecing - My preference is to use 8½" X 11" unprinted newsprint paper

Print foundation papers (link here), remembering:

Fabric is sewn to the paper on the back (unprinted side)

Machine-stitching is done on the paper from the front (printed side)

Printed blocks should measure 5½" X 5½" unfinished. (Finished blocks are 5” X 5”.)

• 31 MIRROR blocks
• 30 RIGHT blocks
• 6 Top/Bottom side A blocks
• 4 Top/Bottom side B blocks
• 6 Right/Left side C blocks
• 4 Right/Left side D blocks
• 1 each of four CORNER blocks: Corners 1, 2, 3, 4

Fabric Cutting - for 61 full blocks, and 24 partial blocks. 

From PRINTS, cut:

    36 - 5¾” X 5¾" squares for block
    49 - 2" X 8" rectangles for a block center strip

From BACKGROUND fabric, cut:

    2 - 8" strips. Subcut 8" strips into 40, 2" X 8" rectangles (36 rectangles will be used)

    7 - 5¾" strips. Subcut 5¾" strips into 42 5¾" X 5¾" squares

From binding fabric, cut 

5 - 2¼"-wide strips

Foundation Paper-Pieced Blocks - 

In this example, we're using a MIRROR paper. Note that the printed side of the paper looks like the insert is "facing" right. Fold paper on the lines. 

To make a print fabric block (with background insert), pin a 5¾" X 5¾" square to the wrong (unprinted) side of a paper. 

Use an Add-A-Quarter ruler to trim 1/4" from a fold line. 

Pin a 2" X 8" background rectangle to the trimmed edge, being sure background fabric covers the left-hand tip of the paper (as shown). 

Pin and sew, using a shortened machine stitch length (1.90 on my Bernina 770QE). 

Press.

Fold foundation paper to trim the raw edge of 2" X 8" background rectangle.

Pin the remaining print fabric to the 2" X 8" background rectangle to the trimmed edge.

As shown, be sure print fabric covers the right-hand tip of paper. Pin.

Stitch.  

Press.

Trim block to measure 5½ X 5½”.

Remove papers. It's okay to do this now, rather than wait until the quilt top is finished. Because the fabric edges are on the grain or cross-grain, we have no worries about fabric-stretching. 

This is a MIRROR foundation paper that makes a MIRROR block. 

Keep making blocks for a total of 61 blocks as shown below. These designations M-P, M-B, R-P, R-B are used on the diagram as a guide for laying out your quilt top.

I found it helpful to arrange full-size blocks on my design wall, laying fabrics in the openings that I then sewed as I went along. 

Foundation Paper-Pieced Partial Blocks

Once you've made the full-size blocks, you'll have no problem making the 24 partial blocks for the quilt sides and corners. Simply use the printed foundation papers to make them in the same manner, noting that all side and corner blocks are pieced with a print strip and background fabric. 

Again, I found it helpful to arrange the print strips along the outside edges, to see where I wanted to place them. Then, I pieced them. 

Complete the Quilt Top

I used my favorite web-piecing method to assemble the quilt top. 

1. Join blocks in diagonal columns - upper left to lower right. Press seams open.
2. Join columns. Press seams open. 
3. Your completed quilt top should measure approximately 43" X 43”.

Though the block seams are pressed one direction. I prefer to press-open joined blocks seams, to reduce bulk for domestic machine quilting.

Completed quilt top.

Download Jiggle-Joggle-Jee quilt pattern and foundation papers

Quilting

I used a combination of walking foot quilting, ruler quilting, and free motion quilting.

First was walking foot quilting on both sides of insert strips, following along the "jiggle-joggle" to quilt from one side to another.

I've drawn the ruler quilting and free motion quilting on my acrylic board, so you can clearly see where the gentle curved arcs appear. Those were done with a curved ruler. 

Quilting was completed with free motion quilting an open ribbon candy wave through the inserted strips. All quilting was from one side of the quilt to the opposite side, so no stops and starts for thread-burying (unless your bobbin runs out!) 

For backing, I dug into orange stash to cut and piece 11-1/2" X 11-1/2" squares for this 16-patch. Binding is made from 5 - 2¼"-wide strips of solid orange fabric. 

Another finished quilt hanging in our Bismarck palm! My favorite view.

I am happy to share my Jiggle-Joggle-Jee quilt with you, and hope you will make a quilt with this pattern. If you do, please let me know so I can see a picture! Tag me @flourishingpalms on Instagram, and use the hashtag #jigglejogglejeequilt. Linda

What Others Make

If you've been following my blog for a while, you may remember that in October 2019 I designed and made this quilt using selvedges. My tutorial for making selvedge blocks is here. 

Not only was it great for using-up selvedges, but happy play was big stitch hand quilting concentric circles on it.

Recently, blog-follower Cary who lives outside Merritt, British Columbia, Canada, emailed these pictures to me, letting me know she'd made a selvedges quilt using my tutorial. Isn't hers gorgeous?!

The quilt is 59" X 70" and she quilted it herself on a Bernina 770 (like mine). Cary likes quilting with a combination of free motion and ruler work. You go girl!

Cary also likes to use selvedges to make postcards, and shared a couple of them. 

Such a great idea, don't you think?

In July 2020, I shared this quilt, my original design called "Jiggle-Joggle-Jee."

A friend, Dee @quilterdee who once lived near me but has moved away, made her version using my "Jiggle-Joggle-Jee" foundation paper piecing tutorial that includes downloadable foundation papers. 

Dee used fabrics she'd won in a giveaway to make it scrappy. She did such a nice job! I love the color arrangement.

It makes me happy to know my tutorials are being used. And I'm grateful that Cary and Dee shared these pictures with me. Thank you both!

I'm also glad to have these pictures to share because not much has been happening in my own sewing room. I'm hand-stitching my Alison Glass Stitch Club Kantha Sew Along, and it's slowly coming along - 22 passes along the 78" length, so far. And, I'm making a cover for our son's electric keyboard, using Painter's Palette Solid "Nautical," a dark, dusty gray-blue which will suit the room, but is ho-hum to work on. As I work, I've continued to listen to a book... 

Book Recommendations

Though it may look like I'm lying to you about these two titles (HA!), I assure you I'm not! It's totally coincidental that I selected two consecutive books with titles about lies. 

The Marriage Lie by Kimberly Belle is about happily-married Iris and Will who live in Atlanta. They're completely in love and ready to have a baby. Will leaves to catch a flight to Orlando where he's to be the keynote speaker at a conference. Iris, who's a high school counselor, receives the news that Will has been killed in a plane crash - a flight headed to Seattle! Grief-stricken and confused, she tries to understand why Will was going somewhere other than Orlando. With her brother accompanying her, she goes to Seattle only to discover the truth about Will's upbringing. Yet, she doesn't understand. When Will's boss tells Iris about missing money, her disbelief grows. Will is not the man she thought knew. He's been lying, and she will get answers to her questions. 

Linda's score: 4.0/5.0

With this second book I've read by author Heather Gudenkauf, I definitely have a new favorite author. Her stories are spellbinding, and I thoroughly enjoy that they take place in Iowa. The locales, especially as they include Iowa's sometimes harsh climate, feel completely familiar. Though Heather changes the names of cities, there's just enough familiarity with the state to imagine the characters in Iowa.

This is How I Lied takes place in Grotto, Iowa, in and near caves. Fifteen year-old best friends Eve and Maggie are each having personal guy problems. When Eve is murdered in a cave, Maggie's world nearly comes to an end. Except Maggie stays in Grotto. Now, 25 years later, she's is a detective on the Grotto police force,  where her dad was once chief of police and investigated Eve's death. The case has been reopened by the new police chief who believes that advances in DNA testing will identify the killer. But as Maggie is eager to take on the investigation, she's also dealing with her late-stage pregnancy, a dad with dementia, and Eve's younger sister Nola, who is not only crazy, but determined to pin her sister's murder on Eve's boyfriend. 

Linda's score: 4.0/5.0

Linda

Pandemic Stuff

After the busyness of making my Jiggle-Joggle-Jee quilt (previous post); taking step-by-step pictures; writing a blog tutorial and pattern; and scanning and uploading the pattern and FPP templates to Google Drive, the last few days have felt like a vacation! 

I've continued to sew - mug rugs and and several EPP Prudence blocks. Next up is to finish this too-old EPP into a pillow.

Oh! And I must make quilt labels! These eight quilts all need labels!

Though my intentions for 2020 have been to slow down quilt production, the pandemic has given me time to finished nearly all my WIPs. I still have just two, slow-going quilt WIPs. I'm relieved to feel caught up, and embrace the arrival of a new direction for me - to do more handwork, and make other non-quilt things. When an order of 4/4-weight cotton warp thread arrives, I'll begin another peg loom weaving project. By the way, I ended up buying the peg loom from my friend. 

Recently, Dan golf-carted to Barnes and Noble to come home with new games to learn. After months now of playing gin rummy, we're ready to try something different to change-up our evenings - Rummikub and Backgammon. Notice that he picked up the "large numbers edition" of Rummikub. Perhaps is's no surprise that's the only version our B&N sells!

As many of are doing in our area, we're still staying home, postponing haircuts, and going to the grocery only when necessary. Also, Farmer's Market is on the weekly schedule for buying fresh produce. A trip to the post office was necessary to mail Nana-made face masks to our granddaughter who will return in August to her last semester of college. 

And speaking of her.... Celina and I received the best news on Friday. The quilt she and I made together was accepted for publication in Curated Quilts! 

If you're not familiar with this journal, read more about it here. Curated Quilts is printed quarterly on high quality paper, without advertising. Subscribe here with the code PALMS and you'll receive a 10% discount.

Celina and my quilt, "The Road Between Us" will appear in the October 2020 issue, in the "Youth Challenge" gallery.

The Road Between Us, 10-1/2" X 10-1/2"

Celina improv-pieced the quilt top with me over FaceTime. Then she mailed me the little top and the leftover fabrics. I added the burgundy hand-appliquéd "road" and "roundabout," hand-quilted, and finished it with faced binding. 

It was such a treat to call Celina, put the whole family on speaker phone, and share the happy news that our quilt was accepted into the journal's quilt gallery. We all chuckled that Celina could add this recognition to her job search resumé. Her degree will be in finance.

Have you tried this trendy whipped coffee drink? It's called Dalgona. Lots of pictures/recipes have been showing up on Pinterest.

Dalgona

It's easy to make. Use an electric mixer to whip together equal portions - 1:1:1 - of hot water, instant coffee, and sugar. I used 2 tablespoons of each (decaf instant coffee for me), and spent two minutes with the mixer, whipping it into beautiful peaks. Put ice and milk in a glass, top it with the whipped mixture, and spoon it together for drinking. I like it!

The taste is unusual - somewhat like very strong coffee, but with a tang. Since I didn't use all of the whipped part for this drink, I stored the leftover in an airtight container in the fridge. The next morning I used it as coffee topping. I'll be making it again. 

Book Recommendations

Good Girls Lie by J.T. Ellison is about the Goode School in Virginia, a prestigious all-girls boarding school where the elite send their daughters before admissions to ivy-league universities. The story follows Ash, a newly-arrived student from the UK, and her introduction to the school, the dean, and some of the students. Ash is bright and capable, but her experiences aren't as positive as she wishes, beginning with the sudden death of a teacher. When a student dies, Ash understands that someone knows what she's been trying to hide. This fast-paced physiological thriller is on the order of The Lying Game by Ruth Ware. I couldn't put it down.

Linda's score: 4.3/5.0

Hidden Valley Road by Robert Kolker is the (unbelievably) true story of a family, raised in Colorado Springs, near the Air Force Academy, in the 1940s to '60s. Donald, who worked for the Academy and NORAD,  and Mimi Garvin had ten boys and two girls. Their household was turbulent, and when the girls came along, the abuse began. Six of the boys developed schizophrenia, an incurable illness that made them subjects for further study. Schizophrenia research has continued into the 2000s in the form of genome research. Though the story of this family's experiences with schizophrenia is difficult to read, an understanding of the illness - from Sigmund Freud to today- is completely fascinating. If you're familiar with CRISPR (this YouTube video explains CRISPR well), you'll appreciate the way this family has impacted genetic understanding.

Linda's score: 4.0/5.0

Linda

Quilts Away!

After 15 months of not visiting our family in Kansas City, on September 30 we took our pandemic chances - behaving extremely cautiously! - and drove to Kansas City, spending one overnight in a motel each way. We stayed with our daughter and her family the entire time, I visited (outdoors and wearing masks) my Dad three times, and we went to West Des Moines (Iowa) for a day to handle some personal business. We returned home this afternoon, October 13.

Anticipating that we'd be seeing family, I decided to see if I might give away quilts to family members. So before leaving, I uploaded pictures of quilts to my Dropbox account, added the name and dimensions of each quilt, and then emailed families with the link, inviting them to choose whichever quilt(s) they wanted. I'm happy to say that 14 of them were claimed! 

Four of the quilts were made just this year! Surprisingly, the quilt most-requested was Scrap Snap.

My brother and his wife claimed it first, though their two sons also asked for it! 😂 I decided to let them work that out. 

Four of these quilts were finished just this year! I'm documenting here those quilts I no longer have, listing them more for my own reference than yours. 

• Grandma's Wonky Logs, 2020
• Snap Scrap, 2020
• Village, 2020
• Jiggle-Joggle-Jee, 2020
• Ring Me, 2019
• Broke the Rules: Jewels, 2019
• Heading Home, 2018
• Charming Postage Plus, 2018
• Patriotic Pinwheels, 2017
• Outer Space, 2017
• Mod Mini, 2016
• Urban Abacus, 2014
• Space Crystals, 2006
• Mile-a-Minute, 2002

I was sure happy that some of the older quilts were chosen too, though no one picked the one brown quilt I wanted to give away. Brown. Ugh.

After family members had made their initial choices, I invited everyone to take a second look. If they wanted two quilts, or more, I was okay with that. It was my sister-in-law who came through and made a few more selections. It was wonderful to deliver four quilts to Kansas City, and ten quilts to Iowa! My SIL has seven of them! And best of all, we have an empty shelf in our master closet now!

💃

Before leaving home, I got busy putting labels on the quilts I'd missed labeling. Quite a few! I use my MacBook to design labels, and print them on EQ Printables, a plastic-backed fabric.

I couldn't be happier about seeing these quilts go to homes where they will be used and appreciated. Each person - especially my SIL 😄 - expressed their thanks. I have warm gushy feelings about the entire process. I've asked only that I get some pictures of the quilts in use, because all us quilt makers know how wonderful it is to see those. 

As thanks, my brother and SIL gave me five two pound bags of Hy-Vee white popcorn! Dan and I had to laugh because he'd already made a special trip to Hy-Vee to buy three two pound bags to take home.

Along with the popcorn our daughter sent me last month (as thank you for making face masks), I now have 22 POUNDS of white popcorn! Good golly... it's wonderful that they know what I like, but I'll be eating popcorn for at least a year! 

 

While away, I exercised (power-walked, and weight-lifted) several times, which gave me a chance to finish the audiobook: The Night Ferry by Michael Robotham. This is the second book I've read by this author. I like his style!

The story centers on an investigation by UK detective Alisha Barba. At a school reunion, Ali meets with an estranged school chum, Kate, briefly learns what's happening in Kate's life, and immediately witnesses a car hitting and killing pregnant Kate and her husband. Was the car driving toward them intentionally? Was Kate really pregnant?! Ali's concerns about her friend's death, and the suspicious behavior of Kate's family lead her on a path of discovery that takes her to Amsterdam where she is exposed to sex trafficking, baby brokering, and immigrant exploitation. I didn't see where this was going, so it was an entertaining read.

Linda's score: 4.2/5.0

I've unpacked and put away, and am looking forward to digging into sewing room stuff. I have new fabric to play with! Linda