Tumbler Frustration

As mentioned im my previous post, I decided it was time to get my tumbler project off of my sewing room floor and across the finish line.  Knowing that I had a nice quiet weekend ahead with lots of time to sew, I sat down Friday and started assembling rows. Row after row of 57 blocks each.

My little guy decided he would help with pressing...

I continued sewing rows all day Saturday until I noticed that the piles of neutrals were starting to look really low.  So I stopped and counted. I originally planned for this quilt to be 47 rows of 57 tumblers, or around 94" square. I had calculated exactly how many lights and darks I needed and I thought that was what I had cut back when I started this project a couple of years ago. I must have seriously mis-counted my cutting, though, as I found I was almost 300 tumbers short!  I have no idea how that happened.

I scavenged a couple more lights from another Kansas Troubles project and then threw in a couple of fat quarters that worked with the KT colors well and spent Sunday morning cutting more tumblers.  I then resumed row assembly. I kept at it until late in the afternoon, until I was down to this.




I counted and I have enough pieces left to make one more row. That gets me to 43 rows, 8" short of what I planned.



Luckily I have been assembling this thing in sections so I can distribute the new fabrics, but now I have to figure out how to deal with the shortage. There's no way I am cutting more tumblers!  So I decided I have two options.  One is to finish assembling the top, measure the length and lop off whatver I need from the side(s) to make it square (probably around 86"). The other option I am considering is to take three tumblers off of each row and build them into rows.  This would decrease the width by about 5" and allow me to build 2 more rows which should get the length to around 90".

Now to decide which of these options seems less painful....