I go the Jan way. Much easier to manage strips and sub cut. But then the instructions could start off saying you will need 200 4" squares and then say use strips or whatever, but once you know how many you need you could go with your favorite method. The second choice in the example doesn't say how wide to cut the original strips. I guess one would assume to be 4" because the squares end up 4". But, once I see a pattern saying this many of that and that many of this, etc. I get dizzy and have to lie down!