Fabric manufacturers are always looking for ways to make more sales. Someone came up with the idea of selling fabric in pre-cut widths, saving the quilter a time consuming first step. You can get fabric in 5 inch and 10 inch squares, in fat eights (9X22), in fat quarters (18×22), and half yard cuts of collections. They have also come up with what they call “Jelly Rolls,” which are strips 2 1/2 inches wide across the width of the fabric, which is between 42 and 44 inches. Manufacturers will put together strips from an entire collection, typically forty strips or so.
I’d heard about Jelly Roll quilts. There are quite a number of books available with ways to use these strips. One way is to sew the strips end to end, and then sew the lengths together. You can find video on-line of women racing to sew these strips into quilts.
Here’s a link to show you how a Jelly Roll quilt is made:
I was working on a project for Scraps on a Mission and cut two of these strips from every black and white fabric we had. There were a LOT of these fabrics left over once the project was finished, so we started looking for ways to use them. We created two small lap quilts, one with turquoise and one with lime green, and I think there will be one more of these quilts to use the last of the fabrics.
This is the quilt with lime green strips: