The Saga of the Jelly Roll Rug

After a year or more of use, my knitted kitchen rugs started to look a little worse for wear.  They were also very lightweight and didn't like to stay put.  I cannot recall when I first came across a #jellyrollrug, but once I saw one, my mind wouldn't let go of the idea of replacing one with the other.

I started small, with the idea to replace the dog bowl rug.  An actual Jelly Roll was not used.  Instead, I gathered scraps of fabric that I thought would look nice together, purchased a few small cuts of quilting cotton, and ripped my 2.5" wide strips along the cross grain.  Cotton batting was cut into 2.25" wide strips.

I started at the ironing board and wrapped the batting in my cotton strips.  Eventually, this got old, and I decided that the ironing step was unnecessary.  I would just fold the layers together at the sewing machine.

For the first rug, I used my 42" wide strips laid side to side in an order that I found pleasing.

There was no need to join the ends of the fabric/batting tubes since the 42" minus the trimmed selvedge ends was going to be wide enough for my rug.  To finish the sides, I just used another strip of fabric and bound the edges.  It's not perfectly rectangular, but it certainly works, and I think it looks rather pretty!

Of course, once I made the first one, I wanted a larger version to replace the boring gray rug in the living room.  That was definitely going to need more than the 42" strips, so I needed to join at least some of the ends.

Once I came up with a color/print order, I joined the seams along the bias, trimming the excess off after I had a long chain of 2.5" wide fabric.

The next step was to wrap the fabric around more cotton batting until I had a big ball of fabric rope.

The idea for this rug was to make it into a half circle shape, or something similar; large enough to fit the coffee table, but rounded at one end to save on fabric.

Well, my sewing machine table is set against a wall, and once the rug began to grow, it was a struggle to manage.  There is a rippled portion, the rows are definitely not straight, and I had to trim more of the edges than I wanted to, making this much too small for the living room.  The only good thing was that it could replace the other knitted rug in the kitchen.

So, not an entirely successful project, but I think it has charm, and it does work in the space.

But I wasn't over the fact that I wanted a pretty rug to replace the boring gray one.  So a couple of weeks later, I was back at it, making a very large fabric rope ball for my next Jelly Roll Rug.

This time around, I decided to go for the original oblong shape.  And that's where things went really wrong.  I love my colors, and I love the idea, but fighting with an ever growing rug in a small space, with a wall to contend with, and the weigh of the rug dropping off the side of the table every chance it gots was not an easy thing.  I was determined to get through.

I was ironing everything flat at each turn, and checking that it was laying flat for the first bunch of rows, until the floor space in the sewing room could no longer accommodate the growing rug, nor could my standard ironing board.  I stuck it out, hoping that I could iron the thing into submission once I was finished.  But once I brought it downstairs to iron on the floor with some old towels laid down, I saw what a huge problem I had.  No amount of steam or starch or a combination of both was going to get this thing to lay flat.  So I had a hissy fit and ripped the whole thing apart.  And then I put the fabric ball away.

A few days ago I was still glaring at the discarded rope when a thought crossed my mind.  People without an extra sewing room use the dining room table as a temporary sewing table all the time; in fact, I used to do the same thing.  I am so very grateful to have a dedicated space, but in this case, I though the extra room just might save this project.  So I cleared everything off, brought the sewing machine down, and pulled out a bunch of books to give myself a semi flat working space.  Best of all, no wall to fight directly behind the machine!

I also put a towel down and brought the iron downstairs to check my progress.  The corners were cupping slightly, but I was able to iron them flat along the way.

That is not to say it wasn't a lot of working fighting this monster as she grew larger and larger.  The finished measurements are 67" x 40".  I am not sure how many 42" strips are in this rug, but I think there are considerably more than 40 of them (the standard Jelly Roll number, I believe).

Everything was going fairly well until the last few yards of fabric rope.  Then the machine started acting up.  Grrrrr.  I suspect that my needle had enough and perhaps bent slightly.  Well, I got myself a new one and started again, only to have it break as I was pushing the end under.  I suppose I may have been stitching too fast for the added thickness.  Well, a third needle was employed to get through the last few inches of the project.

I gave her a final press, pulled the towel out, and weighted her down with books for a few hours.

Miraculously, I have a usable rug!  There is a little bit of waviness at the center, but overall, I am calling this a win.

And, most importantly, the gray rug is gone!  You can also see a bit of the hand braided and hand sewn rag rug I made a year ago in the background.  I am still convinced that hand sewing on a flat surface is the only real way to keep a larger sized rug completely flat, but I am very happy that this project turned out as well as it did in the end!