It started with a jelly roll

I picked up a Bali Pop similar to this one, several years ago (the one I bought has since been retired) at the World Quilt Show. It had been a long time since I'd tried anything with quilting or sewing, but I fell in love with it, so I picked it up and figured I'd do something with it. Something was fairly nebulous at the time.

That word choice wasn't deliberate at all. I don't know what you're talking about.

Bali pops or jelly rolls (for the uninitiated) are a roll of 2 1/2" x width of fabric strips. They contain anywhere from 20 to 45 strips, usually all from the same fabric collection. There are a few other so called "pre-cuts," also containing all the fabrics from a given collection, including 5' squares (charms) and 10' squares (layer cakes). They go by different names depending on the manufacturer.

Why go for a random assortment rather than yardage? Well, some people, myself included, prefer the scrappy look but don't have years worth of leftovers to actually make a scrappy quilt. Some prefer it as more budget-friendly than buying fat quarters. Some are intimidated by color selection with their first project--or have problems with vision. There are a lot of reasons, and the results can be beautiful and fun!

So, (many years ago, I hit up my local quilt shop, picked out a pattern intended for a jelly roll, and pulled some fabric out of my mother's stash for the background. I sorted my strips, started sewing them, and when i started cutting the background realized it felt...off. I had been a knitter for years, and knitters are very familiar with "mystery yarn," so I did the standard test most knitters do: I took a scrap and I burnt it.

100% cotton fabric will burn like paper: cleanly, with a white ash. If there is polyester or acrylic in it, it will melt, have a strong odor, greasy black smoke, and leave a hard, plastic-y ash (which only makes sense, since it is plastic). My lovely light purple fabric melted the minute it touched fire. So, off to my LQS for a new background. I found one, and boy, was it fantastic:

*Photograph may have been taken with a potato.

At some point, the project got derailed. I'm not sure exactly when, but it all got packed into a bag and put away for years. It was probably that I went back to school. At the time, I was smart enough to do something that probably let me finish the project:

I mean, it doesn't have to be Ziplocs. But this way I don't sound
like an idiot talking about "resealable bags."

Labeled ziplocks are about the best storage method for cut pieces out there. They're cheap, convenient, water and insect proof, and they're see-through. So, in the summer of 2011, freshly graduated, unemployed, and bored out of my skull, I went into my stash and found this:

Nebulas are where stars are born. (Astronomical humor does it with a Big Bang.)

The ziplock is photobombing.

My pattern, my fabrics, all of my progress to that point, labelled and ready to go for the next steps. And go I did.