The half pint jars are 8 oz. I have 2,8 and 12 oz. quilted jars. I use all for jelly. As far as quilted goes, I don't know. Maybe light doesn't penetrate as much as the clear jars.

I just reread your post. Sorry, but you can use any half pint canning jar for your jam. I have several wide mouth half pints.

As DH said, "I don't think the jelly will mind at all" if you use regular 8 oz. (or 12 oz.) jars. Take a risk, LOL. Go for it.

Carol

It's just for pretty. I make house-jam in standard pint jars and gift-jams in the quilted ones. (But my friends LOVE to see a big jar come thru' the door as a hostess gift.... especially if it's the O'Raspberry.)

I suspect the original "quilted" jars were developed as an alternative to cut glass which shows off the jewel tones of jelly; however, I wouldn't want to pour boiling jelly (and then melted parafin) into a cut glass vessel and I certainly wouldn't put it in a boiling water bath.
Kay

There are plain sided 8 ounce jelly jars too. The 'quilted' type are just to make the contents appear a bit more beautiful. The quilted jars, also have an oval flat area where an oval label is placed, as opposed to round ones that are stuck to the lids.

I'd guess the quilted jars were some sort of marketing ploy. Gives them a visible reason why their quilted jars are better than the competitions non-quilted ones.

You can put jams and jelly in any size of jar you want. Sometimes I'll put up guava jam in half gallon jars just because I get tired of all them little jars. When the half gallon jars of guava jam get opened, then it is usually used as a sauce for pork as well as a filling for cinnamon buns just to use up a lot of guava jam all at once.

All I can say is that is a heckuvva lot of jam in one jar. I can't imagine using all that up. But the guava certainly sounds good. Do you mix it with anything for the pork baste?

Carol

OK, I figured there was no particular reason (except pretty) for the quilting, but good to know for sure.

Half gallon sounds huge to me also, but then I often do my jams in 4 oz jars as that is plenty for the two of us at any given time.

Thanks all,
Ann

The pork guava sauce usually has some ginger root in it for a little zing and shoyu (soy sauce), salt, pepper, sometimes onion and garlic to give it a less sweet flavor. Sort of a sweet/sour sauce. Generally I just sorta sniff it and see if it needs anything sometimes just the plain guava jam if just a sweet sauce is wanted. Usually if we are using a half gallon of guava jam that means we've caught a fair sized pig in the trap so there's plenty of pork to work with.

Guava jam generally starts out as a five gallon bucket or so of guavas, some brown sugar although white sugar can be used and a bit of lemon or lime juice although that's optional. Guava season is late summer so our jam supply is made up during this time each year. If I make enough, then I can make guava jam every other year or every third year or so. That's the idea when picking guavas so by the time the jam is ready to can there's way too much jam to fuss with tiny jars. Sigh!