MargeD

I ran across a fantastic sale at a quilt shop, and they had bolts of fabric for $3.99/yd. There was nothing wrong with the fabric, they were just making room for new fabric. I was fortunate to have a budget at the time, and I bought 2 or 3 6-8 yd. pieces for backing, especially for the queen quilts I made back then for my church's raffle quilt at their annual Harvest Fair. However, one particular piece of fabric decided that it wanted to be front and center instead of a backing, and I made a queen size quilt in a Jacob's Ladder pattern, and the green/mauve hydrangea pattern made a spectacular quilt. Some of you may agree that fabrics can talk to you, at least they do for me. Unless I'm buying backing fabric, I will buy 2-3 yards of the fabric that just has to go home with me, if budget allows. Hope this helps somewhat.

jo ford

If it's a good price and I like it I will by at least 3 yards. I've never had any go to waste. I do sometimes overdo it and need to be careful. At this point, I don't need to build a stash; I need to build a house to hold my stash.

Judi in Ohio

A lot depends on how you quilt. Are you a few fabrics quilt gal or do you want to go completely scrappy? I was introduced to the Bonnie Hunter way of quilting many years ago and that's lots of different fabric. I, also make pillowcases, so I buy 1 yd or 2 yd pieces and more yardage if it's a great sale. You can always use as a border or all or part of a backing. I ran into a pieces of yardage sale a while ago and I bought 2 hundred yards - I do have a scrappy batch of fabrics. I, also run the unwashed fabric of Quiltville swap - everytime we have a color strip swap I buy myself 1 yd of 10 different fabrics in that color, cut enough for my swap, and the swaps I get back are 100 different fabrics. Plus it's fun.

wendiq

GingerK.....I just downloaded the Wickedly Easy Quilt pattern (free) I use to buy FQ's like crazy....needed a good pattern to use them up. I'm now in the Sunset years of my life so do mostly charity quilts. This is a good pattern for using up some of my stash that I just can't toss. THANK YOU!

BettyGee

If I fall in love with a fabric I buy 3 yards, even if I don't know what I'm going to do with it at the time of purchase. This has served me well over the years. If the sale is absolutely the best you've ever encountered and have the room then I'd suggest buying 5 yards. I did this many years ago when an online store was closing and it has been the saving factor in many quilts since then.

Annaquilts

I did not buy enough sale yardage when I did have the money. I mostly bought fat quarters when they were marked down. Now I have a good collection of fat quarters to make scrappy blocks but no yardage for backing, border, sashing or binding. Also I seem low in back ground fabric, the lighter tone on tone.

So if I could do it again I would buy 3-4 yard pieces for backs of laps and larger baby quilts and six yard pieces for twin quilts.
One yard pieces for borders, sashing and or binding.
As much of neutral back ground and basic tone on tone fabric I could get my hands on.

RIDGEFIELD

If the shop was "A Notion to Quilt" I shopped there also. I bought some of the fat quarters and yardage for backing. Always a fun place to stop when taking a ride up Rt.2.

maminstl

Most of the places online that I shop have a 1 yard minimum on sale fabrics - so that is generally what I will buy if I don't have a very specific project. If I can I don't like to buy backing until I've gotten enough done on the top to have a good idea of what I want - then I get to shop some more. I have several 5+ yard pieces of potential backing that is languishing in my closet. I don't design a quilt around the backing, so have found that for me, it is not a good plan.

IBQUILTIN

I like to have at least a 2 yd cut of fabrics, and if it is one I really like I get as much as 4 yds. Many times they have saved me when looking for a border fabric or just a color to fill in