Originally Posted by jillaine
Fireworkslover, Thanks so much; that's exactly what I needed-- although I'm also curious about what kind of thinking goes into fabric/pattern selection.
Also, how much yardage waste is there? And what kind? I.e., what does the "left over" look like?
For just cutting the fabric for the hexagons, there's hardly any waste. After you've cut your repeats and stacked them, then when you cut your strips, there's a small triangularish strip cut off each end that's waste. That's all!
As far as fabric selection, find a print that has colors you like. Sometimes you can see what the parts of the original fabric were, but sometimes not. It's best if the background is not a solid color or if it is, then the print should be larger so there's not much background in between. The print can be anything: birds, fish, deer heads, cowboys on horses, flowers, some Oriental prints work well, chickens/roosters, some landscapes, etc. It's best if the background has swirls of color VS being solid. So if there's water, then ripples show or waves instead of solid blue, for example. Maxine Rosenthal has a better explanation in her book "One Block Wonders", as well as photos of good fabric and bad fabric to choose. Stay away from prints with mostly straight lines, doesn't work as well.
If you pick a fabric with small images, like 1 - 1 1/2" diam. flowers, you might want to buy twice as much fabric, so you'll have more fabric to make more repeats with- otherwise you might have duplicate triangles.
The biggest help, I found was to buy or make a hinged mirror. Bring it with you to the fabric store and hold it open on the bolt of fabric crossways, so you see 6 images in it. Then slide it slowly across the bolt to see if that fabric will work for a OBW. You'll see the exact kind of triangles you'll get when you cut it.