Poor quality fabric problem
I normally have good luck buying fabric online. However, I bought a Christmas panel that had blocks online. The fabric turned out to be very thin, raveled easily, and the blocks were not printed square. Actually, the edges were curved a little. I think was caused by the fabric itself being off square too. Anyhow, I starched the bejeebies out of the blocks, added a 3 in border, then squared the whole thing. Drove me crazy.
This is not the first time this has happened to me when buying panels. I bought a gorgeous angel panel that had blocks once, a great fabric, at a LQS but the blocks were printed off grain as rhombuses. They explained to me that if the fabric is off grain when they printed it, the entire fabric run would be off grain. But, I could see this before I bought the fabric. When I buy fabrics online, I have no way of knowing this, nor the quality of the fabric.
I guess I could only buy fabrics that were mfg by companies that I know, but how do you tell when you purchase online that the blocks are not square? Most stores will say cut fabrics cannot be returned as well.