3 yards if it is a great focus or blender fabric. 7 yards if it will make a great backing and borders. Fat quarters I like I buy four of the same fabric. The last few years I've been buying mostly pre cuts. They are easier to store and less cutting for me.

Where I shop, they have layaway. I buy what I might need immediately and layaway two to three times the amount. I am so fortunate they allow this. If I use it immedately and really like it I usually go back and get two to three more yards.

I make king size also, so I buy 4-6 yards, depending on how much I like it & what I envision will go with it & whether I have that in my stash. I'd rather have too much, then not enough.

If making clothes i get three yards. You can make anything with three yards. Quilts i get a little more then what the pattren calls for.

I start at 5 yds-but if it's close to the end of bolt I will take it all. The problems I encounter with fabric purchasing is there are to many fabrics that coordinate. And I usually buy them all : ) Well now that explains why I needed a 22ft box truck to move. But I have done very good this last 18 months -I have only bought 2 yds of pastel pink for binding and 3 yds of a print I could not live without -that I added to my 2 tons of other fabrics I couldn't live with out. But I;m back on the wagon (til the next CLWO fabric spots me)

I usually buy three yards if I LOVE the fabric. If I want it for backing I buy more.

When a fabric practically jumps into my lap, I buy- usually 2-3 yds. I once bought a piece of fabric at a great price, so I bought 8 yards to have enough for a backing. Well, don't you know that fabric wanted to take center stage on a raffle quilt I made for my church. My fabrics speak to me and I try to listen. LOL. That may sound crazy to some, however, I had the resources then to purchase larger pieces of fabric - now that we are trying to live on Social Security, I am grateful that I bought that fabric when I was working. I just finished a twin-size quilt for our DGD and I used all fabrics from my stash - now to check to see if I have enough for a backing. Will do my best to post photo at some point in the future, although I'm having shoulder surgery in 2 days, so I won't be doing much quilting for a bit.

LOL! I like to make quilts with several different fabrics, so my issue is seeing a whole line sitting there on the shelf together looking so pretty and co-ordinated, and I want the whole line! So I like to get 1/2 a yard of my favorite 4-10 fabrics (I often do 8 fabrics), plus extra for borders and binding in my favorites. Yeah, on Thursday I went to JoAnn's to use my 60% off coupon for stablizer and ended up getting 17 yards of quilting fabric because it was on sale and looking so pretty there all together on the shelf! LOL! I didn't mention it to DH. Not that I think he would mind, but he'd laugh at me! I'm such a sucker! JoAnn's saw me comming, that's why they sent me that darn coupon!

I'm terrible for shopping the "sale" material. I believe anything $2.50 and under is "all" mine. I have tons of semi-bolts of material just sitting around waiting to match up with something.

I bought 8 years of St. Pat four leaf clover material for $1.00 a yard recently. Last week I went to Walmart and their Easter material was on sale for $.75. You guessed it. I have about 20 yards of bunnies and eggs.

KAT

Fat quarters were on sale a few weeks ago. I thought I would take advantage of the sale so I would have a nice supply of different fabrics on hand for various projects. I started piling them into my cart, not paying any attention to how many were stacking up....... I went down the row for all the pinks, then all the greens, then the blues, etc., picking the ones I really liked (through ALL the colors). When I went to check out I had 70 fat quarters, and I could not put any of them back. Just had to have every one of them. Oh well, that should sufice for a while. tee hee