No more mystery bundles. Nope no more!
 

While organizing my fabric, I noticed several mystery bundles I've ordered from different web sites. All three were clunkers. Hopefully eventually if I cut them up small enough I'll be able to use them. What a waste of money.

So ? is: Do you order mystery bundles when they pop up? Were you pleasantly surprised?

Even when you order fabric on-line with a picture you can be disappointed with the selection. So is the best way to shop is in person? Oh but the fab on the web sites are so pretty! And not available in my area. https://cdn.quiltingboard.com/images/smilies/frown.png

I've never bought a mystery bundle, probably because I'm still new enough to be filling out my fabric stash the normal way. I think maybe at some point in the future I'd be willing to buy mystery bundles but for a specific reason- I think we all tend to sort of have colors/patterns in fabrics we're drawn to and end up buying over and over. I think I'd use a mystery bundle hoping it would round out my stash with some colors or patterns of fabrics that I'd never think to buy for myself.

I've bought a few, but they tend to be hit and miss. One I really liked, it was fat qtrs in colors I could use, (don't remember where I got it), but the other one was a waste. Again don't remember where I got it

There is too many fabrics that I do want. I don't want to order fabric that I might not want.

I don't want someone else making the decisions about the fabrics in my stash. It's just too much fun for me to find my own way in the fabric selection process.

No mystery bundles for me. I usually only buy yardage for projects. Don't buy fabrics for stash. Just don't have the room. And I do prefer to buy in person but have some limitations in my area. Just ordered a wide backing from Fabric.com and am very happy with this and my previous purchases from them.

Early in my quilting life I bought a few because of price. I wasn’t expecting new releases or popular fabrics but I love scrap quilts and at the time I didn’t have near enough variety. They weren’t totally random....all Tula or all Kaffe for example. Some duds included in most packs and it is amazing how challenging it is to use up a even a fat quarter when you don’t like it! I used quite a few to practice FMQ, some for zipper bags and some for experimenting with new techniques.

the ones I had great success with were all batik mystery bundles and for the right price I wouldn’t hesitate to purchase more of those. It is unlikely I will purchase non batik mystery bundles again, too many large prints and novelty type prints.

I just bought my first bundle and I am so disappointed with it. Nothing I would ever buy if I had seen it first. It's sitting here waiting for me to decide if I should send it away or if it can be cut small enough to not show the ugliness. My last time buying site unseen.

I've never bought a mystery bundle because I don't like fabric surprises. And I don't like scraps either. I got a "gift" once from a well known seller and it was awful !

I have never purchased a mystery bundle. My stash is enough of a mystery to me. I believe I would find them to be a waste of money for me and end up in my scrap basket or cut into charms.

I might try a limited mystery bundle - such as all solids, all batiks, all blenders. Those could be useful to fill out gaps in stash. Solids are always useful and I have next to nothing in the way of batiks or blenders in stash.

But, I'd have no use for juvenile prints, Civil War era, country-cutesy prints, etc. Too much chance of waste for a general mystery bundle.

I've been trying to organize by color rather than designer/collection - HA! I have so many large, bright prints I may just group them all together by floral, geometric, etc. Or maybe from loud to raucous to "it goes to 11". : )

I also tend to buy the same prints in different colorways. I find those hard to break apart into color groups but keeping them together feels like I'm limiting myself.

When I first started I did a monthly modern print color club - 12 modern print fqs a month in one color rotating around the wheel. That helped give me at least some fabric in colors I might not tend towards. That was enough randomness for me.

I ordered one mystery bundle for the first time recently. It was a Kaffe Fassett bundle, so I thought, how bad can it be? It was the ugliest group of fabric I’ve seen and honestly couldn’t believe he’d designed anything so unattractive. I thought some of it was probably from when he first started out and had been sitting on a shelf for years. I took it up with the vendor, who promptly refunded my money without blinking. I won’t order a mystery bundle again, no matter whose name is on it!

I've not purchased a mystery bundle, but my stash looks like I have. It hit me the other day how to use some of these "will never use fabrics".. Cloth bags to ship meal worms for blue birds. Sew a little drawstring, stuff with stripped newspaper, add your meal worms and ship. They will probably end up like feed sack material, treasured!

I have never bought mystery bundles. In fact, I hardly buy fabric on line unless I already have some and know the true color and quality of the fabric. Your bundles could be used in scrap quilts if you like to make scrappy quilts.

I have bought two mystery batik bundles from the same company in the same order. I wanted to add variety and dimension to my jewel-tone batiks. I only buy jewel-tone batiks despite my intention to broaden my collection.

Results: There were no repeats within the bundles nor with the second bundle. About half of the fabric, are ones that I would have chosen. The other half were lighter shades or colors that are not my favorites but are still very nice. Only one or two from each bundle were pieces that I find unattractive. Since I will be paper-piecing and I wanted different tones and a wide variety of colors, my purchase was a success.

Yes, I would consider buying a mystery batik bundle again.

I don't buy any pre cuts of any kind. I only use yardage that I already have. I am trying to use up my stash. When the yardage gets smaller then I use it in scrappy quilts. I try to make a variety of scrappy quilts for foster kids in my county.

never bought one, don't even like to buy jelly rolls unless I can see the whole thing.

I bought a mystery scrap bag exactly once, from a well known seller, to increase my purchase enough to get free shipping. It was supposed to be brand name fabric from a collection, in usable sizes up to four inches wide. What I got was a roll of selvages off of plain white fabric. No patterns or designs, just the selvage edges with about half an inch of usable fabric on each piece, with one strip of blue in there for variety. I made a rag rug out of it because I couldn't throw it away, but it was worthless for quilting.

Probably the same one I got and I thought the same as you. Ugly and old. And I did the same as you, sent it back.

I never understood why anyone would do this. I always figured I’d end up with a bunch of browns or earth tones when my love is brights and jewel tones

I too ordered the Kaffe Fassett bundle and it's the ugliest bunch of FQ's! Wish I would have thought to mail them back, oh well...lesson learned.

Cheese

I don't care for Mystery bags, and I don't like the Christmas ornament exchanges either. Way too many times I would end up with broken or plastic one from the dollar store. I couldn't believe some people would buy the seconds and give those. Even in fabric exchanges, you have to smile like it's wonderful and you really want to ask the person what they were thinking. And it's not due to lack of money, they are just cheap. One year someone actually put their McDonald's trash in a gift bag for one of the White Elephant gift exchanges and thought it was hilarious. At 66 I don't need anything else that I don't like cluttering up the house.

I bought a batik fat quarter mystery once, thinking that if there were browns/neutrals in there it would be OK as I don't buy those and it would be good to round out my stash.
That's exactly what happened. Lots of jewel tones and a few browns/sand FQ's. Actually quite happy with it. Not sure I'd do it again though, as now I've got lots of batiks to use up and I don't do pre-cuts as a rule.

Watson

I have bought the mystery bundles from top name online shops before and I haven't been disappointed. I have used them all in my hexie making, small projects, etc. There were some I wouldn't have bought yardage of at all but worked fine making blending hexies. Some were used in string piecing blocks. Once a year Keepsake Quilting use to sell a 100 piece fat quarter box no repeats for $99. I loved that box. All from the fabric sold in the shop from that year.

No mystery bundles here... rather pick my own fabric...that is half the fun in quilting..

I've never ordered a mystery bundle, but may I suggest that if you don't like the fabrics for a quilt, perhaps you can use them for another project that uses small scraps such as a "sulky" scarf, or place mats.There's always a use for a fabric, no matter how ugly, I say.

I bought mystery bundles twice _ both times from Blueprint before the reorganization. Initially I *was* disappointed. But I started a new quilt yesterday (bear paws in brown and burgundy) and wouldn't you know some of the FQ came from those bundles! I think you have to be willing to let it ...sit.. and your brain relax and open to possibility.

I bought two from Green Fairy quilts - in the summer I think. both were 4 fatquarters that went together tied with a ribbon. I used one in a gift to a quilty friend and kept one. These were little fat quarter mystery bundles on sale. I would buy from the shop again. At guild years ago in a brown bag auction I got a horrible scrap bag of a few tiny pieces that I couldn't make use of.

I ordered a "Red Bundle" from a nation-wide company probably 4 years ago... What a clunker! The fabric quality was nice but the actual prints were not really usable in the Red and White quilt I had planned on. One FQ was printed 1.5 inch squares of Coca Cola brand logos. One was red background with rather large and ugly yellow chickens. I only remembered this because I had to move some boxes around last weekend and opened up a storage bin and both of these were looking me square in the eye when I lifted the lid! I know Bonnie Hunter says that you should keep cutting a fabric smaller until it isn't ugly anymore.... but those logos and the chickens are too big and the fabric would never "read" as red, no matter what I do. No more Mystery Bundles for me!

I have bought 3 floral scrap packs and one Christmas/Winter Holidays scrap pack. And all were pretty colors , nice prints and good quality fabrics. And lots of variety to spice up my small stash.

I have bought several mystery FQ bundles and was pleased with almost all of them. Once I got duplicates of three prints - thumbs down on that. I love scrap quilts (Bonnie Hunter, Corey Pepper) and every few years I put together a scrap brick (3.5" X 6.5" blocks) quilt with one block from all the leftovers and misfits gathered along the way.

I don't do mystery bundles because you never know what you are getting. I do order from places that have a buy "all or none" section and many times it's less than a yard for next to nothing. I have ordered off selling sites on Facebook and most times the fabric is good...clunkers once in a while.