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Welcome to what I am calling “week 0” of the Five Little Ghosts quilt-along! This week, we’re not doing any cutting or sewing. Instead, we’ll be talking about the fabric pull for both the runner and the quilt versions.
If this is news to you, I’ll bring you up to speed ...
Five Little Ghosts appears in my book, Not-Your-Typical Jelly Roll Quilts. It’s a fast and easy sew. I appreciate options, though—and I thought you might, too. So if you’d like to make something bigger, I designed a throw-size quilt with the same block. The directions for supersizing the Five Little Ghosts pattern are available free in my store (although you’ll need a copy of Not-Your-Typical Jelly Roll Quilts whether you sew the runner or the throw). Here is the schedule:
Fabric Pull (Week 0): [you're here!] and YouTube video
Cutting (Week 1): Blog post and YouTube video
Sewing Ghost Blocks (Weeks 2 and 3): Blog post and YouTube video
Assembling the Top (Week 4): Blog post and YouTube video [forthcoming!]
Halloween Parade of Blocks and Tops: Fill out this form by Nov. 4, 2025
No registration is required. Prizes will be announced next Friday,
September 19, and the only thing you need to do to enter is sew a single
bootiful ghost. Winners will be randomly selected at the end of the
quilt-along, on October 31. Now that you’re in the know, let’s get into the details of assembling a fabric pull for our projects ...
If you’re sewing the runner, you likely have all the fabric you already need.
The original Five Little Ghosts pattern calls for five jelly roll strips for the ghosts, a background fabric, and some scraps for the creatures’ eyes and mouths. That’s what I love about it: You probably already have all the fabric you need!
For my ghosts, I used some floral white-on-white jelly roll strips that were left over from the other samples I had sewn for the book. I really love those prints because they’re a little unexpected. Here are these little ghosts trying to be spooky, but they’re made with pretty fabric, rendering them more sweet than scary.
Don’t have leftover jelly roll strips? Cut from yardage or fat quarters.
As described on page 9 of Not-Your-Typical Jelly Roll Quilts, two 2.5-inch strips from a fat quarter equal, inch for inch, a jelly roll strip. Depending on how the pattern at hand cuts jelly roll strips, sometimes you’ll need a third cut from a fat quarter, but that’s not the case with Five Little Ghosts. Just start by cutting the longer pieces first. For this pattern, that’s a rectangle 2 inches by 8 inches.
Don’t have any Halloween fabric? Think beyond orange and black.
I always encourage quilters to consider the fabric they have before buying more (although buying fabric is so much fun!). So even if you don’t own any Halloween fabric, you may have just what you need for a Five Little Ghosts project.
For example, consider the fat quarters from Modern Background Paper, pictured on the right below, by Zen Chic for Moda. I think these low-volume options would look cute as ghosts.
There’s more going on visually with the set of jelly roll strips on the left, from Bountiful Blooms by Sherri and Chelsea, who also design for Moda. Even though the strips feature some darker colors, I think they would work well as the ghosts, especially if you paired them with a solid background to create more of an autumnal feel than a spooky ghost feel.
Expand a fabric collection with prints from the designer’s other lines, and use the two-colorway idea.
The throw project differs from the runner in that it uses jelly roll strips for the ghosts and fat quarters for the backgrounds. I’m going to sew the throw with the purples and pinks from Lella Boutique’s Hey Boo line.
In Not-Your-Typical Jelly Roll Quilts, I talk about different ways to supplement a jelly roll (see page 10). But those guidelines really pertain to any fabric collection. For example, if I need to add more of a particular color to a fabric line, I turn to the designer’s other collections. That’s the case below. The pink heart print is from a different Lella Boutique line, but it’s still a close match to the hot pink boo fabric. I think I will cut a background or two from it for my project.
That pink heart print does double-duty because I am going to use the same print in a different colorway—a white-on-white—for the ghosts. Repeating an outside print in more than one colorway is a simple but effective way to create cohesion when you are adding it to a collection.
It’s worth noting that I am cutting the ghosts for my project from yardage instead of jelly roll strips. I know that defeats the purpose—after all, my entire book is designed for jelly rolls! But it’s what I have on hand, and it will look great in my throw-size quilt. If you are considering cutting your ghosts from a single swath of yardage as I am, you will need 1.5 yards of fabric. I'll talk more about cutting in next Friday’s installment of the quilt-along. : )
I hope this post helps you as you play with fabric choices for your project. If you have questions, let me know—either by commenting below or tagging me in Instagram posts.
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