The other thing I notice with this fabric is you mentioned cutting 3"x 10 1/2" pieces. It looks like if you want each piece of stripes to line up with the others, you will need to skip some fabric between strips. (the lines are not printed 3" apart) Will that cause a problem?

I mention this because recently I made a kit where the illustration of the finished quilt was doctored to make the print come out nicely when in reality, there was no way to make it look like the picture.

I think I used this exact same fabric recently. It looks weird if the lines aren't straight. I ended up cutting it going straight on the lines. Since yours is in a kit, hopefully there's enough fabric to cut it out straight.

To anyone following... so I pulled a horizontal thread as suggested...great idea forgotten from home ec class ;-). Here’s a pic. So if you can see it, the print is not running true with the grain or thread pull. The kit is indeed a Craftsy kit. I have contacted them and just received an email back that they will see if they have more of the fabric and get back to me. I have a navy piece in the same kit that is printed just fine. I think I’ll end up fussy cutting as best I can. I’d be happy if I can just get the pieces cut so they are all just running level side to side and not listing off kilter. I’m not concerned with there being exactly even spacing of the lines within the cut pieces as that is way too close to perfection than I’m interested in doing :). As far as doctoring the pictures, I suspect it’s the designers shot if the quilt from EQ where the spaces have been filled with a copy/paste like process and it just looks like they’re all perfect. At least that’s what I’ll go with ;-).

Oh my gosh!! That is really out of kilter. But it looks like the stripes are relatively straight to each other, which should make fussy cutting easier. It will be interesting to find out what Craftsy does about the oopsie. Their customer service is usually top notch.

Unfortunately, with today's fabric, this is often the case. You can try washing it and drying it flat (basically blocking it). In my experience, this will not 'fix' it. It has been printed wrong. But, your pieces are small enough that you should be able to cut them so the lines are straight. The grain lines shouldn't be that much of an issue on pieces only 3" wide. I have pretty much given up on long striped fabric unless I can cut it diagonally or at least wedged so the lines are less obviously printed wrong. Almost every day at work I run into this issue when cutting fabric for folks. I always point it out before I cut it so they can change their mind if it will be a problem.