Years ago I took a crochet class,and because Iwas left handed the instructor told me "just turn your book upside down!" I never went back,my mom taught me, but I only made one thing. Never had a problem with quilt classes. I did English smocking and that instructor was (yeah) left handed!

rules were made to be broken. so just do what works for you. My first quilt I gave to a dear old friend turned out just how I wanted it and he loved it, that was before I knew there were any rules at all.

Cross cut or fabric cut from selvedge to selvedge egde has more stretch then cutting paralel to the selvedge edge. It can be problematic when working with long lenghts of strips, such a borders of a single fabric, long skinny block units and many binding issues can come from cross cut fabric.
I do many quilts that have multiple borders, and having a mix in particular .. a skinny narrow cross cut next to a lenghtwise grain border .. the cross cut will never seem to lay quite as flat as the lenghtwise cut. I do have to "mix " my cuts as sometimes it just not as effiecient use of fabric ... but every time there is a noticeable difference in the "mixed" edges . Starch does help in reducing the stretch while working on the project ...
Bias edge or a diagonal cut at an angle across the weave will produce the most stretch.
Batiks because of the tight weave do not stretch nearly as much as regular cottons on the cross cut. Test yourself .. take a piece of fabric and try to stretch pulling on the parallel to the fabric then same fabric pull across .

Thanks for all the good advise ladies and gentlemen i love this board

I really admire the way you handled that. Sometimes we make a really big issue over things that only intimidate others or challenge their position. You were very gracious...but discerning. :)

Once had a "teacher" who could not admit that her way wasn't the only way. If I can't do it how someone has shown me I usually think there has to be a better way for me. Doesn't make anyone right or wrong just different. We didn't consider her a good teacher because she didn't want to share information, but if anyone came to class with a hint she would be very sarcastic. We always had to go find her if we need help because she spent more time out in the shop than in the class room.
Some of us started our own group.
The shop owner kept saying they had a long list of people waiting to get into the classes. Well if this was so why did she go out of business less than 12 months later. She even tried to convince me that rayon was a natural fiber.

Actually, rayon is sort of a half-breed - it is neither a truly 'natural' fiber nor truly a 'synthetic' fiber.
It is a manufactured regenerated cellulose fiber.

So that person was partially correct about the rayon.

I too press my seams open. I feel everything lays flatter. We say ther are no quilt police but how is an opened pressed seam looked at my judges in a show?

I had one tell us to be sure to pull the backing down as tight as possible and tape it down, before pinning the top to it.........well, you can guess what that tight backing did, once it was untaped and I tried to quilt it..............no way to make the top fit to the bottom, evenly............

I too press my seams open. I feel everything lays flatter. We say ther are no quilt police but how is an opened pressed seam looked at by judges in a show? I also use poly blend threads now because I quilted a quilt on the diaganol and the all cotton thread I used breaks if it has the tiniest bit of pull on it. I also try my best to cut all border fabric length wise so I don't have to deal with the stretching from crosswise cut pieces.
Robin in TX