Originally Posted by dunster

If you started a jelly roll race with 20 strips, you would start out with 800 inches, plus spacers, but I'll disregard the spacers because they won't have that much of an effect.

As you sew, you will have a piece measuring 400x4, 200x8, 100x16, 50x32. That size might be appropriate for a baby quilt, but it will actually be a little longer than 50 because of the spacers.

I would rather come up with a quilt that's a little more square, say 40x40. That's the problem with the jelly roll race - you're constricted by the width being a power of 2 (i.e. 2,4,8,32,64...) and the length being a function of dividing the original length by 2 a number of times equal to the power of 2 used for the width.

You also won't get quite the same look if you're trying for two baby quilts, since with a 50 " wide quilt there won't be as many changes in fabric as with the wider quilt you get from using the whole jelly roll.