Nuts! I cut my "squares" wrong
 

OK...apparently I'm missing a major chromozone between my brain and my hands. I was sewing jelly roll strips together and had a lovely 4 row bar going. Stopped, measured, 8 1/2 inches, perfect! Somehow my brain thinks that if I line up my fabric up a 1 and measure over to 8 1/2 that I'll end up with a 8 1/2 inch square. Right? DUH!!! no ding-bat, you end up with a 7 1/2 by 8 1/2 inch square. (Darn that 1)....any suggestions on how to get out of this mess? I've cut the entire 2 rows, so have about 8 odd squares HELP!!!! (please)

whatever you do, it will change the design of the quilt unless you start over. you could add a strip on each side, or just one side. depending on your quilt, you could make all of the blocks rectangular instead of square. so sorry for your dilemma.

Been there did that! Gah I hate to waste fabric!

I would sew a 2" strip bar to the end to match the strips, then trim to size.

Sorry this happened but at least you'll never make this mistake again! (I make plenty of mistakes but seldom the same one twice. I keep finding new ones!) Can you make your project with 7 1/2 squares? If not, it's probably a restart. Good luck!

thank you everyone for the suggestions - I'll play around with your ideas and if I can't get any of them to work, then I'll at least have some really pretty border strips!

Could you use the "mistakes" in the backing? No one will know the difference and it won't waste the fabrics.

I would probably do the 2 sets over again. But I would cut the wrong squares into 2 1/2 inch strips and use them for a border or the binding! Not a total loss. Ann

Oh yes, I have done it too. I think of it as a "blue tape" day because, believe it or not, on one project I kept rotary cutting in the wrong opening line of one of my June Taylor shape cut templates. Not just once, either. Doh! So I had to put blue painter's tape over BOTH lines on either side of the ONE line I needed to use to NOT keep making the same mistake over and over. Man, I do worry about my brain cells sometimes (I already know my eyesight is bad!). ;)

In your situation I would just take a deep breath and do them over. I have found that it's not worth the aggravation to try to force mistakes to work. When one thing is "off" then everything else just gets worse from there. There is a definite "domino effect" at work on quilting measurements, both positive and negative! I usually use the extra blocks and unused (aka "messed up") blocks on the back for interest so they don't go to waste since they look fine but are just the wrong size or something that would not work with the design on the front.