The trouble of 2-inch strips!

If you have been reading for a while, you know that I planned a scrap quilt to use my 2-inch strips…..

I planned it and cut all of the strips….and then realized that my calculations were wrong!!

I thought of two fixes….either put the block together as is and trim it down to size, OR increase the white square to 2×2.5 inches.

With this in mind, I set out to work on it at my guild retreat.

The results were NOT GOOD!

I started with the first idea of piecing and trimming to size…..

After trying three times, the width of the block was perfect but the length was between 1/4 and 1/2 inch too short!!

After thinking a lot about it, I decided that the problem was because I didn’t have any markers to ensure that the strips were all sewn straight. There was nothing to “match”.

Bottom line…..I didn’t want to fight it!

So, I moved on to plan B…..or is it Plan C?

I started grabbing sets of two strips, not worrying what colors I put together or what sizes of strips…..

Every so often, I would add a white square to the end of the strip…..

Then I started sewing all of the strip sets together lengthwise….

…until I had 2000-inches of strips…..

….with the idea that I was going to make a “Jelly Roll Race” quilt from my strips!

I finally found the two ends of the long strip…..

and began sewing them together along the long side…..

The first round of sewing took about 1 hour!!

By now, it was after 10pm so I made my way back to my room and pick it up again the next morning.

Join me tomorrow for what happened next!!