I was thinking about this when doing my first ever quilting fabric shop recently ....
Bear with me because it will all be in metres and Swedish kronor but the point is the same!
Fat quarters were 19.95 - call it 20 SEK - which is 3.02 US dollars so exactly in line with this thread!
A metre of fabric, a yard and 4 inches, could easily be 67, 79 or 87 just based on what I picked out ... and many of the same fabrics as the FQs were sitting there on the shelves ...
So, taking four fat quarters as 80 SEK = 12 US dollars means that I might be able to save money by buying a metre to cut into FQs of the 67 SEK cottons but the really wouldn't be much in it of the 79 and 87 ones (87 = 13.12 US dollars)
I think the slightly extra cost of the FQs is often worth it if I am unlikely to be using more than one FQ of that fabric ... but as soon as I start picking up more than one FQ of the same design - perhaps to have one to swap - I should probably think about whether it is worth getting a metre cut instead ....
As many of the fabrics were available on the roll as well I don't think my fabric store was using up ends of rolls for the FQs, but I can see how that would be a good idea for the store. I did sift through the 'end of rolls' or 'cut badly' 'has a fault' table but found it quite annoying that I had to search for the fabric type constantly.
Helen