I spy fabrics I would choose
 

You don't have to do what I do. I've been asked what kind of fabric design to choose. I like to choose a design that I can cut a 5" strip selvage to selvage and then cross cut into 5" pieces. I don't always enjoy fussy cutting, so I avoid anything that has to be fussy cut.

I took a sheet of copy paper and cut a 5" square hole.

Here are some that I've used in swaps before:

Here are some fabrics I bought when I first started swapping I Spy squares. Now that I've had more experience, I would not choose these. Mainly because they have to be fussy cut, but also because you lose too much fabric. It's fine if you choose to do that, but I have a bunch of fabric like this that has never been swapped. The ones I'm showing you are 1/3 yard cuts. Normally, you could get 16 - 5" squares from 1/3 yard.

You see how nice the bicycle fabric is, but you cut one 5" square and you've lost several inches of fabric to get to the next place you can center another bicycle.

On the Flamingo fabric, I decided to fussy cut it and see how many I could get. I got 10, which is pretty good. However, only about 8 of them were nicely centered without extraneous legs and heads.

bkay

Thank you so much for posting examples, both winner and not so winners. I will have to try the paper framing trick!

Something I did that was helpful to me -

I cut a 5 inch square of template plastic and then taped 1/4 inch nasking tape around the edges so i could see what the "finished" square would look like.

One could also just draw the stitching lines 1/4 inch from the edges of the template.

I also had that learning curve about the prints.

Well, I never thought about making my own template. I finally found a 5" square template. I found I use it a lot, sometimes just for cutting small things out.
bkay

I use old Xerox films. Remember overhead projectors? They make great templates!

There are quite a few 5 inch square rulers available - that might make things easier.

Yes, that's what I meant. I finally found a 5" ruler, not a template.
bkay