Bloemshow 2026

This year I entered 8 items of which 6 won prizes.  I also won the Christa Gouws Trophy for the most items entered at the show again. I won the trophy previously in 2018, 2024 and 2025.

3rd prize

2nd Prize

2nd Prize - R75

1st Prize - R125

1st Prize

1st Prize

Total quilt prize money R65

Christa Gouws Trophy

Jelly Roll Rug Nr. 2

Two fellow quilters visited me mid-June to get some tips for making a Jelly Roll Rug.  I am no professional but having done one already I was able to give them some tips as well as directing them to the Facebook and YouTube sites I used to help me with my first one.  The info is available by clicking on the Jelly Roll Label on the right-hand side.

Although the tubing was completed back in June, with my husband being in hospital 4 times in as many months and me dividing my time between two jobs, it had to wait patiently for it's time to shine.  This time I made a green and purple one from 2 jelly rolls as well as some fat quarters of the same fabrics.  This one ended up 38 x 51.5".

Although I didn't unpick anything this time around, I had my work cut out for me with my Brother Luminaire acting up and constantly skipping stitches, no matter the presser foot or stitch I tried, all did the same.  Changing thread, needles, bobbin cases, everything, no luck.  After contacting a Brother dealer, I was advised to clear out between the tension discs as well as to change the tension, the presser foot pressure as well as the stitch length and width.  With everything done and finding some fluff in the tension disk, I was finally able to complete it.  Almost the whole rug was stitched twice to get rid of all the gaps. 😒 And after all that, the rug isn't 100% flat as I stopped ironing along the way as it looked completely flat.  Well, lesson learned, keep on ironing.  

A whole heap of tubing ready to be transformed.

This label was added to the end and

this one to the back.

Jelly Roll Rug completed

Although I had to undo the blue part twice, it was such a fulfilling project that I ordered more batting from Temu to stitch another one.  The undo part was rough will millions of little pieces of thread to remove, but the stitching itself is utterly relaxing, just you, your thoughts and your machine chucking away.  And the best part, it is finished when the rope ends!  No quilting, nothing.  It is done.

So, using the nifty Clover Tube Maker, the strips with batting are turned into a long tube 4 layers thick

and rolled into a ball by starting with the colors you want on the outside of the rug on the inside of the ball.

There are a few ways of starting out in the center for an oval mat and I chose the more traditional way which use this template.  To calculate the beginning of the start strip, just deduct the width from the length of the rug.  I think I started with about a 12" strip and ended up with a rug of  34 x 44".

I did not experience any trouble with the inside bends, just keep scrunching around the bends, keeping the outside of the tubing flat and iron regularly.

With the blue parts though, I somehow didn't feel the need to keep on feeding extra fabric around the bends, big mistake.  But, after fixing it, it came out great.  The photo was taken just before the final press. so I can guarantee you it lays flat.

At the end of the rug, I just added a handmade label to both sides and added the quilt's label to the back and off to Bloemshow it went.

Three of the Rotary Cutter members finished their items as well.

Rika stitched a beautiful turquoise rug,

Marietjie did a rug in shades of blue

and Hesmari made a gorgeous beach bag.

This group offers so much help.  Do join them and just follow the posts for a few weeks before starting your own.  Uniquely Mateo is another goldmine of information.  Another big help is this Jelly Roll Calculator which tells you how many strips you need for a specific size.  So, what are you waiting for? Take the plunge and enjoy!

Jelly Roll Rug

Our quilting group, the Rotary Cutters, decided on Jelly Roll Rugs as our first project for the new year.  I had two similar Jelly Rolls of 25 strips each and combined them into one long strip.

50m fabric strips

After this step, the fabric gets rolled onto a pvc pipe awaiting the next step.  Luckily my husband had a pipe laying around and asked our neighbor to saw 2.5" lengths which I could give out to all our group members at our meeting on Wednesday.

We are now awaiting our rolls of precut batting which are ordered from Temu to continue stitching the fabric and batting into a long tube.

In order to create the tubing, we also bought the Clover Fabric Tube Maker which just make the process so much easier than folding by hand.  

Now, you don't have to buy all these nice to have's.  You can buy your own fabric and batting and cut them to 2.5" and 2.25" respectively over the width of fabric.  If you want to get a Clover Tubing tool, they are available here on Clover and Stitch's page.

I joined a Jelly Roll Rug group on Facebook and found very handy tips as does Uniquely Mateo.

With the tubing you can create placemats, bags etc. in any shape or form with circular and oval shapes by far the favorite followed by rectangle mats.  One thing to remember though is that they will slide on tile or wooden floors without something attached to the back to keep them in place, but placing on carpeted floors, no problem with sliding and it can then be used on both sides.

Below is a beautiful bag created with the tubing.

So watch this space as we proceed with our individual projects.