If you cut all of the leaves off, it won't produce any more. That's why I only take the outer leaves from the romaine. Lettuce grows from the inside/out, and will continue to produce inner leaves, until frost. I'm sorry for your dilemma, I bet they were pretty! Did you take pictures? Granny can tell you how to do the "cut and come again" correctly.

EG

Angela, as long as the CENTER is left intact they should keep growing. If you left 2-3 inches, I wouldn't think you'd have stopped the growth. Maybe a better way for you would be to hand pick the outer leaves. That's actually what I do with my lettuce, it was the mesclun bed that I was cutting. I hand pick leaves from my spinach and my lettuce, only taking leaves that are large enough to use. I notice they aren't growing much right now, and the variety of lettuce I planted, Red Sails, never did get to a decent size...next year I'm going back to my old standby, Prizehead.

I ran out and took a photo of my mesclun bed, you should be able to see how closely I cut it and how tall the previous cutting has grown. BTW, I did provide filtered shade for this bed when it was hot...I placed a sheet of white plastic lattice over it, which let it sun, shade and water through.

It looks pretty rough, because I just cut last night and then I dug a bunch of it up and put it in containers to hopefully transport to AZ!

We are expecting temps back up in the low 70s with lows in the 40s again, so I've moved the seedlings outside. The red lettuce plants I'd put inside under the light turned green! No red in them at all.

Here is a link that might be useful: Annie's Kitchen Garden