
Didn't we have a nice conversation about jelly rolls and sources for patterns and books to instruct us how to use them? Thank you so much to everyone who chimed in to mention their favorites.
As far as I am concerned, I am flabbergasted that I neglected to mention Kim Brackett and her amazing books that offer extraordinary patterns for using 2 1/2" strips. I own two of Kim's books and have made at least three quilts from them. Her designs are innovative and interesting and come with extremely clear instructions. I love Kim's books and am embarrassed they didn't come to mind first!
I also own a Moda book called "On A Roll", which I admit I haven't used, but upon further examination has wonderful designs by well known Moda designers who use 2 1/2" strips to make beautiful quilt designs.

This is a new pattern I got recently, and it does call for a jelly roll. I bought yardage, not a jelly roll, so it remains to be seen if I will be making the entire quilt as shown. I may shorten it up considerably and make a table runner out of it. It would be striking at Christmas with a nice floral arrangement in the center section.

The Pattern Basket patterns are excellent for using pre-cuts. Layer cakes seem to be the pre-cut of choice for many of the patterns, but so many of them do work with jelly rolls. I did order several for immediate download, but my printer is on the fritz, so I could not print them out to show you. Check out the website for yourself.
This has been a week and a half, and it is only Tuesday as I write this. We are getting started with the year's homeschooling materials and routine. To be honest, I am feeling pretty overwhelmed. Everything is new and different. We stopped by the charter school which is monitoring Eva's homeschool progress for the year and came home with a Chromebook (which isn't working) and about 80 pounds of textbooks and teacher manuals.
Eva has to be pre-tested to assess her math level. We just stuck our toe in and did less than five minutes of the pre-test and had to stop. Eva knows her addition and subtraction and is pretty good with multiplication and division, but this assessment was a speed test! Eva had about six seconds to come up with her answer to each simple addition problem and completely froze up when she had to respond. I felt so sorry for her! She was a total deer in the headlights. "8 plus 3"? "Uhhh..." It was a disaster.
We stopped the test and I made flashcards and we worked on speed answers. We will see how it goes!
Anyway, things are kind of hectic around here, and there is definitely no sewing happening.
Thanks for all your wonderful participation in the comments! You all are carrying the blog for me right now!