lfw045

What can I say......learn to "love" the fabric. Fondle it, caress it, rub it against your skin.....if it feels good, looks good, most likely it is good. Do all of the above and your heart will tell you yes or no. :^)

Schnookie

Quiltbug.com has a good article on this here is the link to the page... good reading... http://quiltbug.com/articles/fabric-type.htm

retired teacher

I usually buy fabric with the final result in mind. A child's quilt that will be washed a lot and drug everywhere doesn't get expensive fabrics unless purchased on a great sale. When the child gets older he /she gets a quilt with better quuality fabrics. Wedding quilts - the highest thread count I can afford.

Doris M

Price is only an indication not a guarantee. I was told by someone in the textile business that there 12 grades of, I think it's called, dress weight cotton. This is the basic fabric before printing. The same person told me that Free Spirit uses grade 12, the highest so a scrap of FS is a good for comparison shopping.

A number of other factors play into the final cost. You might find 2 fabrics printed on the same cotton base at different prices. Sometimes you can see a difference in the quality of the printing--one fabric has clearer details for example. The wear & handling of both will be the same. Where the fabric is printed will also have a price impact. Japan or the USA or western Europe are going to be more expensive than fabric produced in the 3rd world. A designer name will also cause the price to escalate.

Sometimes I feel ripped off. I LOVE Kaffe Fassett fabrics but the quality of the base fabric is, I feel, inferior to say Free Spirit or In The Beginning, & etc. A real love hate relationship especially with his flimsy shot cottons.

Learn to trust your hand. To save $ shop sales at your LQS. This is a good way to build a stash especially if your stash is nearly non-existent.

Jo Mama

I've thought of something else. I used to live in SE Pennsylvania and did all my fabric shopping at a store named Zooks in Intercourse, PA, the heart of PA Amish country. Zooks carries all the major brands and at prices several dollars below local quilt fabric stores in most of the rest of the U.S.. They carry first quality - no strike offs (rough cotton fabric that is printed to test out a new design). They can do this because they have bus loads of tourists visit every day. When I moved to the Florida Panhandle I thought I was doomed - no more Zooks. BUT, later at a visit back, one of the Amish ladies said they have a website (not maintained by Amish or course). Here it is - they have lots of good sales and specials: www.zandsfabrics.com

Gramof6

As was said earlier, buy what you can afford, there are no quilt police, learning about fabric is a process and your likes and dislikes will change from time to time. The main thing is to enjoy yourself while choosing fabric and making your quilt. Learning is never ending and a huge part of it.

The fabrics that I bought that bled so badly, one was Windham and I've bought a great deal of their fabric before & never had any problem with bleeding. Never. I will cont. to buy their fabric because it is a good quality and I love it. The other 2 pieces was RJR Fabrics and I also will cont. to buy this. Never had a problem with any of theirs before either. Just test your fabric if in doubt and go from there. I always do a test on all fabric that I buy.

Jo Mama

Do you use a color catcher? They have been life savers for me.

Ramona Byrd

A good budget stretcher is to go to a thrift shop and buy men's cotton shirts to cut up. The shirts have the best plaids and small prints that's hard to find. If you buy shirting fabric in a quilt shop, if you can find it, it's very expensive.
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I agree absolutely on this. Men's clothing seems to be made better and made
with much better fabrics. I never seem to be able to find this material for sale.
I get men's shirts in yard sales, thrift shops, and for the asking from family, especially those who are moving and don't want to take pounds of extra weight across the country!!

And I love the shirts that are a solid color with tiny bright stripes!!

Jois

You've got a lot of good ideas to think about here. I dip a lot of my just-bought fabrics in hot water and put them on a metalic rack/dryer in the bath tub, let them drip dry. On a good smart day I'll spray starch them right on the rack/dryer.

If I've found a fabric I need that isn't a nice as I'd like I'll cut it out with a layer (pre-washed, dried, and maybe even sprayed with starch) of muslin as a liner. I wouldn't have thought of that on my own but a woman with three boys lined the knees of her boys' jeans as soon as she got them bought, washed, and dried. She said it made the knees last longer. Seems to do the same for thin fabric.

Jois