still without a jelly roll

I didn't have enough canned beans to make white chicken chili for dinner, so we drove up to Walmart this morning. Turns out they have just as many pretty jelly rolls as the store in Bend, they're just hidden away from the rest of the fabric so I'd never noticed them before.

I found two in colors I loved, and carried one around through half the grocery department before I thought to flip back one of the edges and see if the fabric was nice enough to justify the fifteen bucks. Maybe it would've washed up okay, but I decided not to gamble.

On the way home, I started doing the math. Craft Warehouse has Moda jelly rolls, and they had a 40% off coupon not long ago -- why couldn't I have developed this silly little obsession then? With the coupon, a real jelly roll wouldn't have cost much more than Walmart wanted for theirs on clearance. Of course, if I did have a real jelly roll, I'd probably want to do something more spectacular with it, so I'd still be in the same boat I am now.

The whole thing got me so annoyed I did some math, pulled out the florals I was using for some of the baby quilts and made this --



To make a 30x30 baby blanket, it took 450 inches of 2 1/2" strips. I didn't have big enough chunks of fabric to cut them all WOF, so my strips ranged from about 18" to 40"

The first two folds were nerve-wracking, exactly like joining a knit cast on in the round without twisting, but once I got those done, the rest was easy.

Would I try it again with a real jelly roll and 800 inches of fabric? I'm not sure. It depends on what Joanns has when we stop there next week.