Batik fat quarters
 

I am taking a convergence quilting class and need fat quarter batiks. Where is your favorite place to buy them? Online? LQS? Just buy yardage and cut my own?

all of the above!! I have found that i often wish I had more than a fat quarter gives you so I buy 1/2 yards and whole yards, depending on how much I like it... good luck

Joann's carries them. Just look in the regular quilting fabric area. Usually they are at about eye level running along the fabric display walls (on a little plastic shelf-container thing). You have probably noticed regular fabric fat quarters there. I have purchased some very nice ones, but do check each as some are poor quality, looking faded and thin. They are only $1.99 but go on sale at times for only 99 cents to $1.29 each. Good luck!

Thousands of bolts carries fat 1/4 of batiks. Sometimes its actually easier to buy Fat 1/4 bundles , that try to buy them seperately. Lots more places sell bundles than individual fat
1/4ths.

on line at:

Batiks Etcetera, Batiks Plus, Bayside Fabrics, Blue Bamboo, The Pine Needle, Fabric.com, to name a few that i have been happy with.

where ever they have them and i do prefer to get yardage because a fq doesn't do me much good. well unless i only need a square of it. but even then i still like to have extra. depending on what you are making and what colors you love just do with that.

I may be asking a dumb question, but what exactly is a "convergence quilt class"? I am not familiar with that term.

I think Ricky Timms has a book called convergence quilts and it is an interesting technique.

Here's a link to the book on amazon. (Hope it's ok to post this link)
http://www.amazon.com/Ricky-Tims-Con.../dp/157120217X

www.fabricfanatics.com in Plano, TX has 3500 bolts of fabric, all of it is batiks. I was in Plano a year ago ago and found this place and I was amazed! The prices are a lot cheaper than the stores so I had to stock up. I made two trips to the store in 3 days. I went to my hotel and spread it all out on the bed and just looked at it. I took a photo and e-mailed back home to my husband. He knew I was excited and told me to go back and get more! I had to go to Wal-Mart and bought an inexpensive duffle bag to pack my purchases in. Luckily I was flying on Southwest so I didn't have to pay for the extra bag at check-in.

I have the convergance quilt book by Ricky Tims. Haven't played with it yet but I'm going to. The quilts are small, more wall hanging size. One thing he recommends is thinking a lot about the border of the quilt and extending the design into that. If you buy extra batik you'll enough to consider using some in the border. I think I'd get a minimum half yard rather than fat quarter.

LQS and I have bought some nice sets online

However you buy your batiks - I would strongly suggest that you prewash them. I started buying batik fat quarters after buying the "Lucky Star" pattern - it called for 30 fat quarters. Then I found another pattern that used fat quarters - so decided to start buying half yard cuts instead of the fat quarters. Then, I started LOVING the batiks so much that I started buying one yard cuts. I had quite a stack of them and one day I just finished washing some dishes and my pure white plastic dish pan was empty and clean - so I decided to dunk a few FQ in the water with a drop of liquid detergent and was I SURPRISED - most of them bled. A couple of them bled so bad that I threw them away. They would never rinse clean. I rolled each piece in big thirsty bath towels and then hung them up on clothes lines that I had my DH to string up in the house. They dried fairly unwrinkled and I have folded them and put them on shelves un-ironed. Just figured that I would iron them when I finally cut them up. Also, one of the very few that I felt was not very good quality was one that had the JoAnn's paper wrap on it - it was very rough - most of the batiks are very smooth and slilky feeling.

Hope this helps!!!

Thanks for the replies. I know there's alot of batiks out there, I was just wondering what your favorite source was.

My teacher is a stickler for setting your dye in any fabric by soaking it in salt, then washing and drying it. She sent out a letter stating to get two 1/2 yards of coodinated batik, or 4 fat quaters. I'm not sure what project we'll be working on.

Thanks again for the advice! :)

They follow many of the quilt shows and festivals as well. They have been at the Houston show and a couple of smaller shows in Texas I've been too. Definitely have the best selection I've seen. Another place is in Joshua, TX, I forget the name but you could google batiks and Joshua, Tx and find it. It is located out in the middle of a dairy farm but wonderful store....full of nice baticks.