Jelly Roll pot holder?
 

Can anyone give me an idea how to make a pot holder in a jelly roll race style? I can figure it out, cut the strips 1.5" wide x perhaps 6" long, but how long total would the first strip need to be to make an 8"x8" potholder?

Another idea is to make a big standard size jelly roll quilt and just cut the sizes out that would be needed. Gee, that almost makes too much sense! Just do it once and bam, it's done.

Any suggestions?

I would just take the strips, cut them a bit longer than you want the potholder to be and then sew them like a strip quilt to a muslin foundation.

What is your goal? If it's to make a potholder that looks like a miniature jelly roll race quilt, I would think you would need to use really narrow and short strips. If you make a full-size jelly roll quilt and cut it up you won't see much of the pattern in an 8x8" area.

Going for the simplest answer, if your finished strips end up being 1" (start w/a 1.5" strip and sew with 1/4" seams), then you would end up with 8 strips. If they are 8" long, then 8 x 8 = 64, which is what the total length of your strips sewn together would be. To make it interesting, don't cut your strips all the same length before joining them/

Depends on how many pot holders you want to make, and whether you want the jelly roll race style on both sides. Rather than doing it like a jelly roll race, I would probably take the 1.5" strips and make them different lengths, say about 5", 3", 6", 4", .... Then depending on how many sides of pot holders you want to make, add 9" strips to the initial strips, or some 8" and some 9" if you want the different pot holders to look different. Join 8 strips, then cut them to width (8.5" if you want the finished size to be 8x8".