Pros and Cons of Piecing with Precut Fabrics! Quilting Podcast #118

hila and my quilting friends my name is Lia day and welcome to episode 118 of the podcast and today I am gonna be chatting about the pros and cons of pre-cuts yes what is the advantage of using pre-cut packs and what is the different disadvantage because there are some disadvantages if you mostly stick with pre cuts for a long period of time you might find yourself getting a little bit bored with what you can do with it and then it might also limit you as far as skill building and getting to that next level as a quilter so I'm gonna share with you some ideas some tips and tricks I am not dogging on pre-cuts at all because I really like them and I've collected them for years but I have generally started to move away from working with pre cuts mostly because I want more control over my quilts I want a piece even faster meaning not piece at all I'm working on quote panels now just as a way of really being more of a designer rather than cutting up fabric that was designed by somebody else I'm interested in designing my own fabric and having it be a panel that I don't even have to cut up in piece and that's just me personally you know I think everybody kind of has to look at your quilting experience and just decide where you're going with it and what you want to do more of and what you want to do less of and you know I really think pre cuts are helpful especially if you are wanting to make gift quilts and if you're needing to work faster because yeah this is a like sneak peak for the rest of the podcast yes you can piece a quilt in a day if you are working with pre cuts very easily in fact so be looking forward to this episode and if you'd like to jump straight to it check below the video for a timestamp so you can jump ahead to that time when I start the topic but I always like to share a little bit of news from what's going on around the house in the last two weeks and my progress on all of my projects so I noticed as I was getting everything ready today that I really haven't been making as much progress on this quilt on my double wedding ring and this is being pea from leftover clothes from my grandmother-in-law Josh's grandmother and I'm making this quote from my mother-in-law and I'm really not I'm not rocking and rolling on this thing you know and I really do need to get it done so I'm gonna start making myself set aside time in the evening to set down and get at least one arc stitched or at least a few pieces prepped up because I know I'm about finished with this arc and then I think I need to make some single arcs I kind of have to go back to my design which is just in my head and lay it all out and see how it's looking this is my first time making a double wedding well I did make one but it was a disaster so I threw it away I was a long long time ago but this is my first time making a paper pieces double wedding ring and I really like it I've had a good time with it and I think it's been an excellent choice for working with clothes so if you have clothings that you'd like to turn into a quilt and it's you know clothing is weird it's not 100% cotton usually it's loosey-goosey it's wobbly bobbly all that good stuff and the paper pieces kind of forces it into submission because the paper it's like a stiff paper that you wrap the edges around and then you baste it in place and I really like it and it's resulting in very gorgeously pieced arcs they really come out nice now as far as the whole applique process whenever I get the whole thing done I will then be applique it to the background and I don't have an opinion on that yet because I haven't done it but in my head that's gonna be challenging because this will be slightly stiff going on to the background fabric which is going to be white I don't know how that's gonna work I'm kind of in my head I'm a little critical of it but I think if I use enough glue it's not gonna be going anywhere so it'll be fine and you know I can deal with it you know I'll make it work so I am I'm looking forward to that I need to get this done I really would like to give this to my mother-in-law for Christmas so yeah I need to think about how I'm gonna set aside time and it's mostly for me it's like if I set on this spot on the couch and I have a dedicated date do that like every evening at eight o'clock I said on the couch right here and the project is right here and all the pieces are right here then I will naturally pick it up and start piecing and then you know Jan James and I will watch an Andy Griffith together so I'll piece them all throughout that and then usually he'll go to bed and then I'll keep watching something else you know Vampire Diaries it's like super super silly show but I really enjoy it all right so I'll watch a couple episodes of that and be piecing the whole time so I might get an hour so a piecing in if I just bother to set down but a big reason why I haven't been is because this quilt has been dominating all of my attention yes I have finished my friendship sampler quilt and yes I did it a month early I'm so proud of myself all right so first admission is most of the quilt alongs that I've done over the years I have been one of the last people to get my quilt together yeah so I didn't want to do that this year I really wanted to get it done get it together and just in case you're confused you cannot put yours together yet the last two blocks number 12 and number 13 are coming out next month and that's gonna be they're gonna both be together in the same pattern so if you're confused as to why I got mine together it's because I already have all of mine done and quilted and yeah I needed to get ahead I needed to not have a stack of 25 quilt blocks on my table they were taking up a lot of space and they were heavy and every time dad and I were doing something I was like oh you need the table clear I'll move those blocks over and it was just a lot of moving them back and forth I took him out to the crafty cottage for a little while and like stashed him in there the crafty cottage is kind of turning into overflow like oh I don't have space for it in here I'll just go stick it out in the crafty cottage I haven't been filming out there as much because I've been filming so much on my long arm so I've been thinking about that and maybe how I'm gonna change that space up a bit I think I want to move my Qzone frame out there it's kind of on the list it's been on the list for a while but I'm thinking about that more and more every day just simply because no the house is feeling crowded and I've been thinking about organizing and and changing some stuff up like just this morning I was looking at the kitchen going I have a wine rack in my kitchen like when we we tore out cabinets in our kitchen I redesigned it and said you know there's gonna be a space there what can we put there oh let's just put a wine rack in so we designed your wine rack and stuck it in there but then I stopped drinking so I don't need a wine rack in my house you know I don't even want it there so I thought about it I was like oh I could turn that into a bookcase and put on my recipe books they're my recipe books are right now in a cabinet so now I'm thinking of this whole rearrange my whole kitchen and just in case you're wondering yes I have started Murray condos second book spark joy and that is the reason for my insanity and I would say that's actually a better book I really think so I mean I think that there you kind of need a read book to in order to need a read book one because she sometimes references stories she told in book one but I would say spark joy is a lot more specific information as far as purging and sorting out like different rooms of your house like the kitchen the bathroom I don't agree with her on hobbies I did listen to that part already and she has she is not a crafty person and does not understand the volume of stuff that a crafty person especially a multi craftool person like me you know where I have knitting stuff and raw wool for spinning and I've got a whole other barn with a lathe and woodworking stuff and leatherworking tools and beadwork stuff you know and painting too I mean I started getting into acrylic painting recently so just all of these different things need a home and it's impossible if she was like put it all together in one spot or put it all together in one room it's like honey it's just not happening that just it just simply cannot happen so yeah I've been thinking about that and you know josh is like well can we you know keep this change a little bit more moderate because you know when I cleaned out the red barn my wood I I took an entire truckload of stuff to the dump and got rid of all of it now I haven't missed a single bit of it and then I also got rid of pretty much almost all my clothes and I have actually maintained that it's now been I think two months since I did the konmari method on my closet and I love it I can walk in there and I can find exactly what I want to wear and everything in there is what I want to wear and I know it will look good on me and I know I feel good while wearing it and that's amazing so yeah I'm still thinking about all of this stuff and I think maybe our next podcast episode will be about organizing and organizing with a specific focus in mind I've been thinking a lot about my yarn collection and here's what's really interesting I do not find joy in yarn but I do find joy in raw wool like my fibers and stuff for spinning so obviously the act of spinning is more of my favorite over doing something with the finished yarn which is not my favorite I very rarely ever finish projects that I knit or crochet in fact actually I've got a project that I need to get back to I keep losing pieces in this quilt I have got the king-sized friendship sampler quilt all over the couch it is all spread out it's like overflowing over everything and I'm losing everything in it I keep miss placing pieces of my double wedding ring here but I think I'm back on track okay so yeah I'm thinking about that a lot but I want to finish the book and kind of think through it maybe do my kitchen maybe do my bathroom work through those spaces and then you just really start to think about this because I I feel like we need another system when it comes to being a crafty person and I'm really thinking about this I think that there's it's a lot bigger issue for someone that's crafty how many times have I trashed my yarn collection just to buy it back again how many times have I trashed part of my like polymer clay collection just to buy it back again I mean it's bizarre but I know I've done that in I don't want to do that again but I also know that I don't necessarily want to do these things right the second so what do I do with that stuff you know so that's what's on my mind I've been thinking about that a lot and I'm sure it will be continuing to stay on my mind as I listen to the rest of this book and I do like her books in audio format if you are listening wanting to listen to something that will just fire you up about cleaning out your house just in time for the holidays that is Marie conda's book the life-changing magic of tidying up and then her second book is spark joy and I do recommend her second book just as much as the first okay so that has been definitely on my mind I have been crazy busy but not getting a lot done which doesn't feel that good and I'm really working on that kind of trying to figure out what's eating up all my time and because I have not yet finished editing all the audio from My Goddess quote book so I think I have a copy of the goddess cookbooks somewhere under this quilt like I said it's just eating everything but yeah the goddess cookbook we have ordered our copies the first boxes of books that will be coming in and I thought about it and kind of going back and forth whether we want to do the pre-order starting in November or late October I think I've decided to do this push this back into maybe more of the middle of November so be looking forward to that if you'd like to sign up to get a pre-order copy just go to Lea DICOM slash goddess and this is my new book coming out about my goddess quilts it is an art memoir that is the best description for it it tells the stories of the quilts tells the stories of my life kind of evolution as the quilter and it is not a technique book it is not a how-to book that book will be sometime in the future that will be sometime later and I was really thinking that I would dive straight into Mally the maker book - that was kind of it's been on the list really wanted to get that done I really wanted that to be my next dream achievement and listen to last week the last podcast episode 117 if you'd like to learn more about dream achievements and I really thought that that would be the next thing on the list but then I realized there is just so much left to do with launching the goddess book and then the planner I do I know I have my planner right here because I was just working in it the dream goddess planner really helps me I'm trying to sign this selfishly entirely for myself it just really helps me stay on track with what I'm getting done it gives me space to do some journaling it helps me keep my week in mind and then I have just short little prompts so I can just journal out what's in my head and I can identify what's bugging me and that's how I know that the message messiness of my house has been really kind of bugging me lately but those books are gonna be coming and I just placed the very first order there's still so much to do so I've got the books uploaded to my printer that's all taken care of but I still need to upload to Amazon and get all those ducks in a row make a Kindle version of the book make an ePub version of the book and upload that to another system it's like there's just a lot to publishing to self-publishing and making sure it gets up into all of the places that can go oh plus the audio and I made a mistake with the audio I started doing some processing and really when you edit audio you need to cut it down and get it clean and then save it and then save another version of it and then do the processing so if you mess up something in the processing you know it's kind of like cutting up fabric you can't go back you know you can't go back to it unless you have a separate file saved and I didn't do that and I started doing some processing and that really messed it up so I think part like I kind of it's I think we've reached the messy middle of that definitely so the messy middle for me is having to then edit again some audio that I'd already done and that is not a lot of fun and so I just need to work through that and just say okay I made a mistake it's okay this is the messy middle I'm not gonna let it stop me and try and drive through to get that finishing energy when I you know get to the last second second or last audios to edit and it's really not that bad because I have just finally after wanting this for two years I have finally set up my desk with a treadmill and it's a standing desk so I can only stand or walk when I'm working downstairs so this has been on my list for a while guys I have been slowly working towards this I did have kind of a cobbled together makeshift standing desk upstairs but I had a really bad computer on that desk so I never used it because it was a really Emily I could do two things on that computer I could answer some questions very slowly because the computer runs so slow and I could maybe do some word processing but then it's not connected to any of my other computers so I need a flash drive I mean it's I know it's silly but it was enough to drive me nuts so I would just naturally not use that computer I'd go downstairs to work more fast more efficiently and that meant I was setting all day you know hours and hours setting and it was driving me nuts I really wanted to be up I wanted to be walking and I knew a lot of times I was working when I shouldn't have been working you know like when I'm tired when I'm too tired to walk when I'm feeling too crummy to walk or stand then I should not be working but when I'm sitting I can I can keep going you know I can kind of be in this you know half you know dazed State and still be working and so I knew that that was a problem so I finally went to Ikea and I got you know simple legs you can just get plain legs that are adjustable in height and a nice tabletop and then I rearranged my monitors so they're up higher they're actually up on a shelf on the wall and then I got a rebel treadmill that goes underneath the desk and it's super super quiet and it goes super slow it does not go over two miles per hour so I love it I absolutely love it I mean it's it's better than I would have expected and I am now averaging I just set everything up on when was that I guess that was Friday I got everything set up I know I still need some chores to hold on my job because I'm kind of a junkie I'm a junkie table person and I really need to have some places to tuck things away so all my knickknacks and stuff are still out and all over the place but for the most part it's all cleaned up and I did a mile already today and that was just checking email that was just you know getting together the information that I needed to start the podcast and that kind of thing and I already walked almost a mile so that feels great and I know on the days and I'm really trapped on the computer you know editing videos when I'm designing quilt stuff like that I will be doing three four miles maybe even more and that feels amazing so yeah and I thought warmer now because you know when I'm sitting I get cold and I intend to wear lots and lots of layers in the winter time and it's just started to get chilly finally after being a very very warm falled here and I am NOT getting cold anymore yeah you know because I'm walking I'm just kind of like oh this is not I'm not chilly I'm not gonna have to wear like seven scarves or something like that through the wintertime I'm gonna be staying nice and warm because I'm not just setting and getting so cold so that feels good I'm really really excited about this guys and because of the rearranging in my other room in my long-arm room I had my my little treadle chores these were something I found on eBay they were really beautiful decorated of decorative treadle drawers taken off of I think a white treadle I'm not sure but I've had these and I think that I'm going to set them up underneath the table top so that way that will keep all my knickknacks but I need to kind of play around with it and maybe move a CPU so that way I don't crash into it that is the one downside I gotta say because I'm walking and because I'm moving my keyboards in and out I have two computers two monitors because when something's uploading on one and that means that computer I can't use that computer because it's all it's doing is thinking about uploading and if I mess with it sometimes the uploads will fail and then I'll have to upload again and again and again if I keep messing with that computer so I've learned a long time ago to have just two computers set up side by side so while one is uploading then I can do other work on the second computer well I have external hard drives for these computers so that way they don't have too much data this is all just the insanity of doing tutorials and having this many videos to go up you end up with a lot of a lot of kit a lot of stuff all over the place and I started having nightmares about my external hard drives falling over and like breaking and losing all their data and stuff so after waking up screaming I am not kidding waking up screaming that the hard drives had fallen over and it was all my fault that kind of thing I finally just said okay I'm gonna get a basket a wire basket and stick them on the wall so that wire basket is coming today and I never want to have that bad dream again I can just be like they can't go anywhere they're you know I'm gonna stick them in the wire basket and then I'm gonna zip tie them so they can't move and that will solve it I will not have that bad dream anymore yeah it's just the insanity of a professional quilter you know it's just when you psyche your side for me I can psych myself out with stuff like that where you know an idea like oh my gosh you know the hard drives might get knocked over when I'm moving all this stuff especially those are the first things that I unplug and move aside and make sure that no one's gonna run you know James is not gonna run by really fast and knock them over or something like that but then that stress works on you right so yeah I I'm I'm working on that as much as it's working on me so I'm excited about that guys I am so happy to be walking now I'm so happy to be a healthy writer because so much of this is set down stuff and I think that's a large reason why I haven't been going out to the crafty cottage is because everything out there is set down stuff too so maybe when I wear myself out stay walking at my computer and standing at my long arm cuz my long arm is set up to be standing too then I'll go out to the crafty cottage and be like okay here's a seat I can sit down now so that'll be good so what else has been going on I have been finishing quilts like a crazy person so this is the quote that I started qct width and I decided to make it a coloring book well I haven't colored very much of it in yet but I'm gonna take this whenever i visit family and have my nieces and nephew color it for me so I think that'll be super super cute all of this was stitched out using digitized quilting designs so QCT is quilt automation where the long arm is now moving by itself so I would program in and tell it that I wanted that design to stitch out in that square and then it would stitch itself you know once I set set it up and tell it where the points are and that kind of thing that it would stitch the design automatically now I think that if I told myself five years ago that I was into this and this is what I was doing now I don't know that I would be horrified but I wouldn't taken me a minute to go really you're into that this is so addictive I am absolutely in love with it it's so fast it's so creative and I just got the design software so I can start creating my own designs and then importing them into the system so I can stitch out my own designs like in the sashing and stuff I can come up with my own feathers and that kind of thing so I'm now learning that software too so my brain feels just a little bit full but I finished that one and then I popped this on the frame I've had this food quilt dad looked at it when I showed it to me was like I think that might have been one of the first things that I helped you peace when he started working for us five years ago so that just lets you know how long something can be sitting around and I quilted it you probably see the back better because it's so busy but it's a really cute cloverleaf design so super pleased with that it'll be a nice little throw quilt get dad to bind that up for me and yeah probably a gift for somebody for Christmas or it might just have it here as a throw quilt for the couch I've had I've had that on the list I'd wanted to get that done I'd wanted to get it quilted I even had it basted ready to take it out and go quilt it on my home machine but then just never had a time or opportunity to get it finished so putting it on and doing a little panto over it was the best solution and I got it done in like two hours and that's amazing you know so I'm looking at my stack of my huge stack of quilt tops which I've filled in all of the drawers underneath the long arm with all of the quilt tops that need to be quilted and my goal is to get all of them eliminated in the next little bit I don't know how long it's gonna take but I'm really thinking about that as a big goal of just get cleaning out clearing out you know some of these I'm not gonna keep you know they're just they're not all that special to me but I do want to clip them myself so yeah it's figuring out what designs I want to use experimenting playing around with it coming up with creative ideas and then of course I'll be sharing videos along the way so that'll be lots of fun - and now for our quilt friends club we have an exciting giveaway this week so I picked out these last week it's a Tonga treats kind of a fall themed really beautiful strip set and then a fall themed seasonal silhouettes kind of an applique laser-cut applique so you could maybe use the two of these together and that winner of the giveaway is Cindy Hartnett so congratulations Cindy Josh we'll be shipping this to you and next week's giveaway is going to be these two packs of Moda honeycomb so they are pre-cut hexagons and they include a little template on the back so that way you can mark your points you could use these for hand stitching they're big enough that you could stitch them on the machine too if you wanted to so that will be the giveaway for next podcast 119 and in order to be part of the giveaway all you need to do is join our quilt friends club and you can check it out at quilt friends club it is a membership only group that helps support this podcast and a super special thank you to skip Fran's and Terry chase thank you guys for joining in the fun and I am working on a series so I have been sharing a series since January that's specific to the club it's called how do i quote lists and so you can join in the fun and post a picture of a quilt that you need help figuring out the quilting design and so I then design a cool quilting design they share some tips and tricks and I do that dependent upon the type of quilting you want to do whether it's home machine quilting ruler quilting long arm quilting whatever it is that you are doing that you feel like that's your skill level and that's what you're happy with I design the quilting designs around that and give you lots of advice and tips and tricks along the way so if that sounds like something you would be interested in come and join in the fun at quilt friends club and now it's time for our podcast episode all about the pros and cons of precuts I hope you enjoy it until next time let's go quilt hello my quilting friends my name is Leah day and welcome to episode 118 of the podcast and today I am going to be chatting about the pros and cons of pre-cuts pre-cut fabrics are really cool these came out I want to say it was around 12 years ago I can seem to remember it was around the 2008/2009 time period because this was right when I was really getting into quilting and making a lot of quilts and all of a sudden these pre-cut pre-cut start showing up in stores and they were just such a fun impulse buy and they were really easy to use and so this is evolved now for more than 10 years we have so many pre cuts available to us now 5 inch squares sometimes they're called charm packs could be called stamps I've seen lots of different names for those pre-cut two and a half inch strips those can be jelly rolls they can be this is a rollup when you the different brands have different names and of course they've kind of copyrighted those names or whatever in order to make them their own but yeah these jelly rolls are super cute those are definitely an impulse buy and as you can see they're cute and they are also so nicely contained and decorative that it's very tempting to want to leave them in their package and not open them up and actually use them it's debatable one thing that you know we have pre cuts that are actually cut fabric and then we have fat quarters and to some quilters fat quarters do not count as a pre-cut because that's basically it's basically a yard of fabric sorry a half of a yard of fabric that's been cut in half width wise versus that skinny little quarter of a yard that's just cut off the end of the bolt you know if you go with that just a quarter yard of fabric you'll get something that's about 9 inches by 40 45 something like that so it'll be a long skinny 9 inch wide strip if you go with a fat quarter you'll end up with something that's around 18 by 21 so it's a much more usable piece when it comes for quilting so some people consider fat quarters a little bit of a cheat when it comes to a pre-cut because you can really cut a lot of things a lot more things out of a fat quarter than you could let's say a 5 inch pre-cut square or a 10 inch pre-cut square I'd say those are like the most common ones that I see two in two and a half inch strips one and a half inch strips and that is one and a half inches by the full length of the fabric so that's like anywhere from 40 to 45 inches long 5 inch squares 10 inch squares and those are the common ones and then you can get some really really weird ones too I mean I've got some pre-cut hexagons that were I think a laser cut they were not they were not cut out obviously with a ruler they I think they were laser cut so you can get some weird stuff and but you know I think that companies have figured out that these are really successful things to sell and so they're constantly coming up with new ideas and new fabrics and new shapes and sizes but those are really the ones that I think are the most popular you know 2 and 1/2 inch strips or what we use a lot in quilting we use that typically for sashing you can use that as borders 1 and 1/2 inch is a little bit less common but they you know that finishes out at a 1 inch strip so that looks really cute in most blocks and then 5 inch is you know you could take 1 pack of 5 inch squares sew those together and have a baby quilt you know you only need one pack of it so yeah that pre cuts are super popular and you know it hasn't taken long for them to take off basically and so in this episode I want to talk about what are the good sides of working with pre-cuts what are the benefits and then also what are the cons because there are some cons in this guys there are some definite drawbacks to working with pre-cuts especially if you get into quilting and you get kind of addicted to pre-cuts and you don't you know go out of the pre-cut air arena because there's some things that you might be missing as far as skill goes that you're not building skill for cutting and working with yardage and so let's start with that yardage this is just a piece of this is actually a piece of canvas I think I bought this for a costume but this gives you an indication of what yardage is so it is fabric cut off of a bolt of fabric it is a big giant piece of fabric and it can be overwhelming to get hit with something like this like what in the world do you do with it you know I've got lots of tutorials many many tutorials on how to starch press and process your fabric how to square it so that way you can cut nice accurate strips but it is time-consuming so the number one Pro of working with pre cuts is it's already cut for you so it's faster so you don't have to take you know let's say if there's like 20 different colors of fabric in this you know one and a half inch skinny strip pack and I think there is probably 40 odd colors you don't have to take 40 different fabrics wash them starch them press them and cut strips out of them so it is definitely saving you a lot of time from that yardage is time-consuming largely because it is such a big piece of fabric it is a lot of space to work with and it can be overwhelming at least in the beginning to get hit with something like this so definitely watch my other tutorials on how to work with yardage on how to deal with that and cutting it down into smaller pieces is absolutely allowed you know a lot of times people will ask me about that and I don't ever try and starch and press and work with like two yards of fabric at once I will always rip that down and make it smaller and yes I do think ripping is far better when it's when you're taking a big piece of fabric and cutting it down into useable pieces I think ripping is far better than cutting because ripping will rip with the grain line and the fabric now if you were talking about cutting strips like let's say you want them all to be two-and-a-half inches wide then you're gonna want to cut that you wouldn't want to rip that because when you rip it leaves a really jagged edge let me see if I can rip this can I mean this is not this is not quilting cotton this is just what I happen to have out here and then crafty cottage so I'm not even sure if I can truly rip this and give you guys an idea of what I'm talking about here but I'm gonna plan I'm planning on making a nice little shop apron out of this okay yeah it does rip pretty easily but you can see where it rips you're gonna lose about a quarter of an inch of fabric on that ripped edge because the edge phrase and it distorts okay ripping I still feel like even with the distortion like that it's still preferable to cutting big pieces of yardage if I could buy four yards of something and I often will go and buy four yards of something okay before I wash it I will rip it into one yard links and I do that so that way it's more manageable it goes into my washing machine and it might tie itself up in a knot but it's not going to twist and twist and twist and become this huge long snake but then doesn't get washed properly and then doesn't dry properly so that's the reason why I break that down the only time that I don't break a piece of yardage like I leave it big is if it's backing fabric and that's the only time and it drives me crazy but you know backing fabric needs to be big because it's the back of a quilt so I hope that makes sense that is just initially why pre cuts have an advantage they are faster to work with you don't have to worry about this big piece of fabric and you don't have to worry about washing it either so that is another thing pre-cuts can't be washed if i went and took this and unwrapped it and stuck it in my washing machine what would come out would be a very large ball of frayed threads I wouldn't end up with any fabric left over it would fall apart right so you can't pre wash any kind of precut so this is actually gonna be a pro and a con and I'm going to talk about why that's a con a little bit later on but it is faster you know you're gonna get basically unroll it unwrap it and be able to jump in and get started immediately another advantage of a pre-cut is the fact that you get so many pretty colors and you don't have to buy you know you don't have to go to the store and pick up 20 bolts of fabric individual bolts of fabric go and say oh I want a little sliver and I went does that little bit or I want to just a quarter yard you know you can get all of those different colors in one pre-cut pack and it's not super expensive I'm you know I think maybe I can't remember off the top of my head how much each one goes for I think jelly rolls or something ground usually around 35 to 40 dollars I want to say that charm packs are somewhere around 7 to 10 I mean I'm rolling off of my memory of what I spend on these things guys I have stopped buying pre-cuts and I'll get into that as to why but you know the prices are comparable to what you would spend in yardage so it's not like you're paying an enormous amount more you know you might not be able to get as far with precuts and there's some reasons for that number one you have a jagged-edged you know they do pinking on the edge it's like a pinking she really want accurate quilts you will cut that off but then that adds more time back into the process so you kind of have to go alright which is more important speed or precision which do you want more I lean towards precision so me personally if I am going to be working with something like this I will either pick a unit such as like fat sorry half square triangle was quarter square triangles hourglass squares something like that and I will make my pre-cut into that unit that's gonna need to get trimmed down and squared up anyway at the end or not then I will trim these up like I take a five inch square and trim it down to a four and a half inch square right and that's just gonna ensure that it's more accurate but yeah I can absolutely say there's a couple quilt shops in my area that I just don't buy fabric there because I know if I even pick up one or two bolts it's gonna be a 30-minute wait while they clean all their junk off of the cutting table it drives me crazy it said yeah that's kind of a little rant for another day but basically they they are always cutting I think kits or something for their shop and so they're you always have all this junk all over the cutting table and then when a customer comes in and has bolts that they want cut then they have to clean up all their junk off the cutting table and it's always a 30-minute wait so if I know if I you know got up there with twenty different bolts of fabric in order to make simulate something similar to a pre cut I'd be there all day right so that's yeah like I said that's a little bit of rant sorry about that guys but you know it is faster and it is convenient you know you don't have to go and shop and pick up all those bolts and they're really heavy and all that kind of stuff and then they want I even have as good of a selection like this is a batik one this one's kind of more of a solid kind of a graphic prints you know they might not even have a huge selection of all of that design in the store and so you might just be looking around going well I can get more fabrics more choice in this pack then I can get in the whole store and what they have available so you never know what you're gonna get but I'd say that's definitely a pro is you know all those pretty fabrics all in one bundle all ready for you and that's what honestly makes it such an impulse buy because it's just it's all pretty and all ready to go I mean I will be honest I have some some fat quarter packs definitely fat quarter packs a big tall long one then I use as decoration have never unwrapped it I have no desire to unwrap it because I use it as a decoration in my in my cabinet with some dishes so that's another thing is that you don't necessarily have to feel pressure to unwrap it and make anything out of it you can use it as decor for different seasons in your house you know and that is absolutely allowed you can use your fabric for whatever you want to write okay so what is another Pro yeah it's far less effort to shop for multiple fabrics it's far less effort to get that cut you can make a quilt in a day and I have more than proven this I so I was getting quilty blocks I still get quilty bucks every month and I was taking the pre cuts that come in quilty box and I was basically setting down and designing a quilt that you could make in a matter of hours now it would take dad and I working together and then also I was writing a pattern too so it was a little bit more effort than one day but we would manage to get most of a quilt planned and knocked out in a matter of two to three days so you can take a let's say this five-inch pack okay if you spread these out and came up with some sort of arrangement and started sewing them together you could have a baby quilt top ready and ready to you know get started quilting in one afternoon you know in a matter of hours so it's absolutely possible to go from no quilt at all to something started in some substantial progress in one day versus yardage you know I get yardage home and you know fabric off the bolt I get home first it's got to be washed then it's got to be starched then it's got to be pressed you know and this can be a process if it's a lot of fabric coming in the house all at once and you know it usually it's two or three days before I can get around to having all the pieces ready to go everything's cut out everything's ready to go and the piecing can begin so that's another benefit is that you can go buy this something today you can pick up that pre-cut and get started and you will have your quilt done if not by the end of the day well then the next day or so okay and another really cool benefit and I actually can help you guys with this one a little bit and that is pre-cut specific patterns so this is one thing that I think is really excellent about pre cuts and that is you can pick this up and you you can search like this is a Kona skinny strip set and you could go and run a search on that and I bet you could probably find 10 to 20 patterns specifically written for this size for a one and a half inch strip pack and you know it's just a matter of searching and finding the right search terms in order to find the pattern that you like to make there are lots and lots of pre-cut specific quote patterns I know Missouri star quilt company has knocked that out of the ballpark you know Jenny Doan has become famous she's world famous now for focusing specifically on pre cut quilt patterns and you know piecing something and making a block and then turning that into a quote showing different variations and stuff of that and she's done a great job with that I did the quilt e box and you can find all of my free quilt patterns at lea DICOM slash free patterns so that's where you can find all of those and all of those you know whether it's fat quarters or I know I did a lot of jelly rolls a lot of 5 inch squares you know there's just a wide variety of different sizes and shapes and whatever you're looking for you know you can find a pattern to work with that and if not this is the last Pro that I really feel like is you know important to emphasize and that is empowering you to design your own pattern it's perfectly fine in fact actually I think it's a great step for a quilter to go I can make a quilt out of that I don't need I don't need some pattern you know to take those you know squares and mix them with some other squares and make a whole mess of half square triangles and then lay those out and come up with pinwheels or your own star block or whatever you like and then just play with that arrangement until you get something that you like and you've designed it and then you put it together and it's I love that because I think so you really start doing the design aspect yourself it's really gonna open up a whole new world of quilting for you and you're gonna start creating quilts that mean more and as you guys know that as always my goal is to help you guys make quilts that mean more that are extremely meaningful to you and I feel like that comes from being challenged in the process of not just following the rules you're following the steps of a pattern of looking at that jelly roll or that you know skinny strip pack and going I want to make that into a quilt that looks like a maze you know our labyrinth or something like that and designing it on graph paper and then making that it's a challenge it's not you know it's not as easy as just following the steps in a pattern but it's so rewarding when you end up with something that's completely unique to you right so yeah I'm not knocking precuts I love free cuts I think they're really awesome and I use them a lot or at least I used to and so now I'm gonna go into the cons and I'm going to explain some of the reasons why I'm moving away from pre cuts why it's no longer the thing that I really want to play with and some warnings if you get into this and you get kind of addicted to pre cuts what are some things that you're gonna be missing out on skill wise and then that might turn around and bite you if you want to get into a higher level of quilting such as showing such as you know really complex piecing that kind of thing you know what are some things to watch out for okay so what are the cons let's go back to the very beginning and talk about preparing yardage so this is the first one and that is I can't wash this that is both a pro and a con it's a pro in that it's faster I can just jump right in right now I wouldn't jump right in jump right in I would take the time to starch and press any pre cut that I use and the reason is fabric whether you buy it off the bolt or you buy it from a pre cut it is naturally loosey-goosey wobbly bobbly right is gonna be doing its own thing it's gonna be danced it's own dance it's gonna be wiggling and wobbling and stretching and skewing all over the place and if you stick a ruler on top of that and you try and cut it accurately so let's say I wanted to piece this together and create rail fence blocks rail fences are just basically three or you know as many strips as you want strips and then they're cut into a square so you piece the strips together and then you cut it into a square so if I wanted to piece that and these are going all over the place so I piece them together and some of them are stretching and some of them aren't so they're kind of going off together and they're rippling and doing kind of some weird stuff and then I lay my ruler gonna cut that I'm not gonna cut an accurate square it's not gonna come out right all the edges are gonna be wavy and then when I try and piece that you know wobbly bobbly thing to something else it's not in a piece well you know my edges my seams are not gonna go together easily it's gonna be a fight to get things to match accurately I'm not gonna just be able to use fingertip pressure to keep those seams together I'm gonna have to pin every single thing and then stretch and skew and fit and force fit it together right so I know I don't just open up the pack and go straight into it I will always unroll the fabrics and I will always starch and press them and I have another whole podcast episode about starch if you are wondering about it I know that starch has a bad reputation in the quilting community I have heard that more than once guys and I actually was funny I came out to the crafty cottage today and I kinda was like that's some proof that bugs aren't actually attracted to starch I had some starch in here and the body bottle kind of did something weird and some starch had spilled out I don't know what had happened maybe I'd gotten too hot I think and some starch had spilled out well I have bugs out here in the crappy cottage this is kind of partially in the woods so if there's anything even slightly edible in here like I once dropped a peanut on the floor and I had an ant problem for six months so if there's anything edible even slightly trust me all the bugs in the woods know about it and they suddenly invade so yeah nothing nothing was licking up that starch that I spilled nothing was interested in it and that's that's really the thing that quilters kind of it's a myth that is spread around a lot because I'm sorry it has never been proven satisfactorily to me that a starch causes bugs to be more attracted to fabric cotton fabric is cotton cotton is a natural fiber you know wool is a natural batting these things bugs eat naturally whether you put starch on it or not and whenever you wash the finished quilt whether you use starch or not the starch is gonna wash out at the end anyway so the way I look at it is it absolutely does amazing things for helping the fabric be more stiff and stable and easy to cut accurately which then makes you're piecing more accurate because then it's stiff and stable and it's not wobbling all over the place and so all of that is benefit that I feel like far outweighs any potential myth that bugs are gonna be more attracted to it and like I said that little puddle of starch on my cat my table that I noticed if it was yummy to bugs trust me they would be in here eating it and they earned so I think that pretty much proves it to me at least probably not do you guys but that's okay I have only heard that a million and one times and that's why I did that podcast episode cuz it's a great quilting debate I mean it is really one of those things that we like to debate and argue about and some quilters do it one way and some quilters do it another and and this is just one of those things guys we argue about it and there's not a right or wrong you know there's not our there's not one single definitive way of doing anything in quilting and I want you to know that it's really easy to get stuck on you know the right way of doing something and there isn't a right way there's just not there's just there's a million different options you've just got to decide what works best for you you know what works within your time frame and your craft and where you're wanting to go with it and what you're wanting to do with it so that leads to the next thing that I feel like is a con you can't wash this which means that this dark blue two-and-a-half inch pack could turn your whole quilt dark blue or baby blue fabrics bleed this is something that I think a lot of people that don't wash their quilts find out the hard way like they gift to quilt to somebody and then they wash it and then it bleeds you know and I think a lot of cultures are in the habit of just not washing their quilts which i think is kind of sorry judgy yes but gross I do think that's kind of gross I wash my quilts you know I drag them around the floor you know I curl up on the couch and my cats are on the couch too so of course I wash my quilts and I want to make sure that my whites stay super white that my darks a Stuber dark and that they don't merge together and create some kind of weird quasi color that's gross I mean trust me when blue bleeds it doesn't bleed bright blue it bleeds kind of a gray icky blue and it doesn't look good on the white and it's not consistent it's not like all the whites gonna change to another color it's all gonna go dingy and then some areas are going to be more blue than others so it's not even a good look if it does bleed so you got to watch out for that and that's a downside of a pre-cut this is the reason why I feel like batik pre-cuts I love boutiques guys you know that you know I love I'm a huge huge fan of boutiques but a filling critique pre-cuts can be dangerous I would be really careful about using something like this with white fabric I I don't know that that is going to be a good idea I think that those fabrics have a tendency to bleed there is usually X if there's going to be excess dye in any kind of fabric it's gonna be hand dies and boutiques you better bet that those are going to bleed some if not a lot and I have gotten ahold of some that took six seven washings with dye grabbers with Center Paul to get them to stop just leaking leaking leaking and that can be the manufacturing process where if they did not die with the right chemicals at the right temperature then the the dye is not going to hold into the fabric it's just going to continually leak out and identifying those fabrics that have problems that's something that you can do in the pre washing process that's something you can do when you're working with yardage that you can't do when you're working with pre cuts so this is just a general piece of advice I would say if you're going to work with pre cuts and you really like them I would stick with solids or prints you know a lot of our higher quality prints don't bleed nearly as much you know it's negligible so I mean if you're mostly piecing with these types of fabrics already you're probably not noticing any sort of bleeding going on but if you want to then switch to something like hand dyed hand dyed fabrics or boutiques you're gonna notice a major change and this is the thing that I think is a limitation is you know saying that only work with solids or only work with prints well that's limiting you and your choices and you might very well want to be working with solid reading Matisse or with hand dyed fabrics that you've made yourself right and that's a door that you would be shutting by saying that you only want to work with that so it's something to watch out for and I do think in general pre-washing fabric while it takes more time yes it does help in the quilt making process it gets that shrinkage it's not a lot of shrinkage I get a lot of questions from people about like combining a pre-cut that has not been pre-washed with yardage that has been pretty washed there's never really enough shrinkage in the fabric to cause that the you know to make that a problem if I am piecing and typically with a pre-cut you're gonna need a yard or two a fabric to go with it you know so let's say I wanted to use these two and a half inch strips well then I would need other fabric to go with it well I might mix let's say I might mix these two together so I would use two different pre cuts together in one quilt well then which one's the background color you know am I gonna need something else well let's say I would just grab this one too you know and put all of those together I might be able to come up with something with all of that together in one go it's gonna be rather busy I typically instead would go and grab one or two yards of a solid background fabric white black you know blue green something like that and then that would become my background color and I would use a significant amount of that to go around the pre-cut pack especially if it's you know if it's busy fabrics and the pre cuts then I want something solid in my background fabric so that way it's not just ridiculously busy all over the place right so that's something to think about too I don't think it's a problem to pre wash that yardage starch press it get it ready to go and then just starch and press your pre-cut I've never had a problem with that I've never had a problem with that but I do think in general let's say where you want to go with quilting you've been thinking about where you want to go with quilting you've been thinking about what do you want to do next and you really want to win a ribbon at a quilt show and if that is a goal on your list and you'd like to make that happen I don't think pre cuts are gonna fit with that that's not me being judgey I just don't feel like that's probably going to be the best fit because you're going to want to have intense control over those fabrics and what they're doing you're going to want to be able to know how they're going to react and know how wiggly wobbly they're gonna be you're gonna want to know if they're going to bleed and or distort or have any sort of issue in the piecing process the applique process or after you're finished and you were quilting it right so giving yourself more control in my opinion control comes from yardage you have enough fabric you can throw it in the washing machine I think and I will caveat fat quarters I do wash in the washing machine now I lose a good inch so I lose some fabric when I do that and I do also wash fat eight that's a bit they could they come out pretty hairy I do wash those they come out pretty hairy but I feel like it's worth it so fat quarters and fat eighths I will actually throw in the wash machine I will wash them on delicate but I will wash them that way just to be sure that you know I feel like that's a pretty big piece of fabric and that's big enough that I can wash it but anything smaller than that I don't wash but I do feel generally that washing your fabric starching pressing going from that angle will give you more control it is going to give you more bang for your buck as far as you know being able to expect and have that experience to know what's going on I would also say that yardage is going to help you develop an idea for the brands and companies that you like I had this question on buying fabric online just recently on YouTube and the quilter was saying that a lot of the fabric stores in her area are closing and then now she's wondering what she should do as far as ordering fabric online and she used to like to be able to touch it and you know know it was good quality fabric and all that kind of stuff and my advice sir was really simple once I start shopping now and start paying attention to the brand's you're buying so this is you know this is something that we might be missing but it's really important the selvage you know that the cardboard insert on the bolt of fabric it has printing on one end if you read that it will say the brand name of the fabric company and it will say the name of that color so if you like that brand a lot you feel like it's a really good quality then yes you can absolutely look up that brand and see where it's being sold online you could even potentially this is an idea if you are finishing lots of quilts you could get a whole bolt of it so instead of just buying one or two yards at a time if you know that you were gonna use a mess of white fabric going ahead and buy a whole bolt of it and that way you won't run out tomorrow right that's just a I think that's a really good idea I've been doing that since before I became a professional culture I was buying bolts of white and black and then now I typically keep you know anywhere from five to ten fifteen bolts on the Shelf of the colors that I'm using currently what my favorite colors are right then and I think that just I mean granted I am doing some volume right but even if I wasn't especially backing fabrics these days because I'm quilting a lot more I'm wanting to be able to quickly grab something and not have to piece something together so that's definitely you know that's definitely why I'm choosing those things okay so another reason why you might find that precuts will not serve you forever is because you might start to notice that when you step back from your quilts they don't have the impact that you're wanting them to have so this is a fairly good pre-cut pack but I want you to notice something there are very few light fabrics there's like one or two in the whole pack one or two lights there's like a light pink there's a yellow and an orange and then a slightly darker pink and that's almost it there's kind of a baby green color but yeah these are very very few lights so your lights are necessary and and this is something that if you ever hear a lecture on color theory they coulter will always say it's not the color that does the work it's the value and what that means is when you look at something you are always looking at it in comparison to the colors around it so that this dark blue looks really dark that's a really dark color I've got a dark purple here but these are almost the same value I would say they're they're really really close so if I stuck the two of these together and I piece the two of these together side by side and a quilt you probably would not be able to see them apart unless I put a lighter color in between them or that would be really what pops in between the two darks right so this is something to think about fabric manufacturers put these sets together and they're not necessarily worrying so much about it being a perfect color gradient they're more worried about it being pretty and being an impulse buy right so you're not going to end up with enough lights or enough darks you're gonna mostly end up with a variety of mediums what a mediums mediums are the print that is it's kind of in between it's not super light it's not super dark when you piece all mediums together it's like piecing this blue and purple together you're not going you're going to be able to see that those are different colors you're going to be able to see that those are different prints but when you step back from it it's going to be blah I hope that makes sense it's not gonna be blood in the sense that it's an ugly quilt it's just going to be blond the sense that there isn't a dynamic difference in color you're not having a nice broad spectrum of colors you know lights darks mediums and you really want ideally more darks and lights you know on that further end of the spectrum and very few mediums in the middle because that gives you that nice contrast that gives you that bold separation of color right most pre-cuts are not good at this most pre-cut packs mostly include mediums and for that reason a lot of your quotes when you're working with pre cuts are going to end up looking value-wise flat meaning like you're gonna step back from it and there's not gonna be something that jumps out at you no overwhelming shape that jumps out at you because it's all mediums it's all the same value so I hope that makes sense if you're wanting more control over your colors and maybe choose a darker or lighter background that's a good way to start putting that in maybe pick an accent color you know you have your background but then you also add an additional accent color and make that a light or a dark so you're adding that in and having a little bit more control over your quilts that way so that's just an idea I do think that this is this was something that I couldn't really wrap my brain around for a good couple of years in quilting so it took me a while to really be able to go oh okay I kind of get that now I understand why I want that now and I don't think it's something that a beginner needs to worry about very much but certainly if you're you know a higher level culture if you're wanting to do more with quilting if you're wanting to compete then having really good understanding of value and how check out those value of color reducing glasses I have a pair they look like red sunglasses and what they do is they basically take the color out so all you see is the value all you see is the whole world in shades of gray but you see the whole world in shades of grey and the different values they are in relation to one another so that if you this is how I will set up a gradient well if I if I have 17 colors and I don't know which one's the lighter one I'll put on those glasses and suddenly I'll be able to see that's the light one that's the next one and I'll be able to put it all in order because we get confused by color it's really easy to see the color rather than the value so I highly recommend having a pair of those glasses and then when you're pulling fabrics for a quilt make sure that you know you've got your mediums let's say you have seven fabrics for it quilts if you have seven fabrics for a quilt I would aim to have three you know two to three of those colors be dark two to three of those colors be flight and one mate you know one or maybe two be mediums you know so you can see kind of your and and be careful you might want to mix it up even more than that you know have I just it's having a nice variety and being careful not to end up with a whole sea of darks or a whole sea of lights or a whole sea of mediums you have got to have that contrast in order to really make different elements of the quilt pop so just off the top of my head like let's say there's a star in the center of the quilt and you really want that started just blazed out at you well whatever is behind that star make that light so that way the star of the start is medium or dark that's going to be elevated or vice versa make the star light and then the background around it dark it's totally up to you but if you make both the same value both medium it's not gonna pop at all so I hope that makes sense okay no matter no matter how much you like any pre-cut pack there's always going to be inevitably at least five fabrics that you really hate in the pack I find that every single time so that is a con that is a con you might love it but you were not gonna love every single print inside of it and no matter what I mean you can't go to the store and go like okay I want this one but can I switch out five of these fabrics for five of those very no I don't think that they're gonna let you do that so you get what you get you don't pitch a fit you know you're gonna end up with fabrics you don't like so then you got to figure out what you want to do with those extra ones that you're not going to use out of the pre-cut pack for me they end up in the trash you might feel more guilty about that than I do so you might want to do something else with them I don't know maybe you'll have a stash for the Uglies or something but yeah I mean it doesn't matter what said it is they always end up being a couple prints that are just kind of not not all that pretty not not your favorite right so let's see another thing speed is not everything and I might have gotten a little bit misconstrued in some of my last podcast episodes when I was talking about how much time a project takes I was not aiming to help you guys be speed demons with your projects if anything I like us to take a little bit more time with our projects just so we can take them through to completion rather than leaving it being an unfinished quilt talk right I want you to take it all the way through so that you have a finished meaningful quilt and you know that episode I think that was episode 116 it was really more designed so that if you saw a pattern and you were curious about how long you would be stitching it and working on it that you would be able to eyeball it no I would say any pre-cut where it's all you're working with this pre cuts and you don't have to trim them down at all probably in a matter of days you can put that together there's a downside to that you're gonna end up with a lot of quilt tops and unless you're taking the time to quilt all of those quotes you're gonna end up with a big stack of unfinished quilts and the pre-cut is cheap and easy to buy it's an impulse buy the batting and backing fabric a little bit less so I actually have an idea for another podcast episode it's gonna be coming up soon and it's about organizing around finishing and like what it takes to actually get all of these code tops and it's a volume guys is a lot of material goes into finishing these tops so I would say when you're shopping and you pick up a pre-cut I want you to go in ahead and price out the batting and the backing fabric to finish it because that pre-cut represents just a little bit of the quilt top you know it's the decorated fabric of the quilt top and then you've got background fabric to go around it you know to put it all together you know and then it's not really showing you the actual expense the it's an impulse for that reason you're not seeing the entire expense coming into play so going ahead and think okay I'm gonna make a baby quilt out of this so that means I need a crib size batting and I need another yard maybe 2 yards of fabric to go with that so going ahead and buy all of that at once and then you've got it all you've got what you need to finish take the coat all the way to completion and then you're also not running away thinking oh I've got a quote right here because you don't you only have maybe half of the quilt maybe a quarter of the quilt and it's so easy to get stuck you know kind of caught in that trap and I have a whole mess a pre-cut quilt tops to quilt and I can say you know it's really easy to get caught in that and then now I'm sitting there going wow I'm gonna spend a fortune in batting to get all of this stuff quilted so I'm looking into alternatives like flannel and stuff just to make some really lightweight quilts quilts of different weights are really fun but then it's also just you know how much space they take up as well all of these tops don't take up that much space but then when I get them quilted and finished they're gonna take up a lot more space then great so it's thinking about all of that stuff and the volume of what we're making okay so getting back to preparing fabric again I know kind of beat it to death but if let's say you take this charm pack and you take it straight out of the package and you piece it together and you might be assuming that those pieces are 5 inches square and they're not first off this one has pinked edges so there's a question mark uh do you line up your presser foot with the outside of the zig zag or the inside of the zig zag I have heard both I have heard line up your presser foot with the outside of the zig zag and I've heard line it up with the inside and I personally don't like the pinking I would like to cut that off but if you're in for speed then obviously you're gonna leave it alone and you're just gonna sew it together and then when you go to sew your rows together if you've not been consistent let's say on day one you sewed and lined up your presser foot with the outer edge of the fabric with the outer edge of the zig zag of that pinking and then the next day you forgot and you lined up your presser foot with the inside edge of the pinking that is an eighth of an inch guys an eighth of an inch off with every single seam let's say you've got 20 seams across that adds up really fast really I mean that could be inches inches off right so it's 9 to be as accurate it's really not I was just taking a closer look at this blue and I can see where and this is another thing you really when you're buying pre cuts really investigate kind of look closely at it you don't want to take the plastic off if you take the plastic off it's yours as far as I'm concerned but really look closely through that plastic this one in particular I can see where the machine may be there was like a wrinkle in the fabric and the Machine kind of skipped a little bit and I've got really hairy stuff right through there and it looks like it's skipped a little bit there too so most likely the strips in this pack are not going to be straight and square to the selvage of the fabric which means they're going to be doing their own wiggly wobbly dance and they're already frayed so you might end up with a bad pre cut you might end up with something that's not there well cut this is another thing to start paying attention to brands start paying attention to who does a good job with this and who does quality cutting and I have just recently run across american-made brand it's a slightly kind of thicker cotton it's a little bit on the slubby side not super super sloppy but I really like it and had a really accurate pre-cut that I bought so I really like that and I like that it was made in America so as far as I'm concerned that was you know two wins in a row so yeah I think definitely start paying attention to the brands that you're buying and what is giving you a really good look and and you're feeling confident with buying and then I mean occasionally you're gonna mean I love Kona cotton but that you know is clearly just an odd one out of the batch that just didn't come out very good right and that can happen everybody has a bad day but if you start getting consistent not-so-great precuts pay attention to that and maybe start shopping around and seeing if there's other companies that you want to check in to or work with okay so this is a really interesting thing I started thinking about it and I realized you know you can you can make a quilt that is designed for pre-cuts but making a quilt that is not designed for pre-cuts out of pre-cuts is not all that easy so this was a question I received a whole lot when we were doing the building blocks quilt along this was back in 2014 and you know pre cuts were super popular then too and I you know I had not planned for pre cuts to be what I made with building blocks I was working with your tidge and it was just two colors of yardage and so I mean I just roughly thought about it and I was like no you can't cut with pre-cuts cuz I had some really big pieces like we did some crazy cutting and stuff for the last block so you needed a 12 inch I think was 12 inch square I might have been bigger I might have been 13 inch square so a 13 inch square there is no pre-cut for that great it would have worked two-piece stuff together and then cut it apart it was just a weird block so that was one situation where I got kind of caught by that and I can remember thinking you know okay so something can be made for precuts but unless it's unless you go into it designing that way it's really hard to reverse something and make it for pre-cuts after the fact I hope that makes sense basically if you have a pre-cut and you want a pattern for it you should be searching for patterns for that pre-cut specifically not just a general pattern because that general pattern is probably going to be written assuming that you are cutting from yardage so that is my general assumption whenever I am writing a pattern I am writing to yardage so I'm thinking okay let's start with their biggest pieces first cut those selvedge to selvedge you know so if let's say I have like a 12-inch square something being cut then that's gonna be the first thing that you cut that's the first thing that's on the list and you know automatically that takes out pre-cuts you can't cut that pattern if it requires something that isn't a pre-cut right so think about that that's gonna limit you in the quilts that you're making if you're only buying pre cuts if you're only sewing and quilting with pre cuts you're not going to be able to make the amazing variety of quilts that you can make right you're not gonna be able to make certain ones and I think that that's okay in the beginning but if you start getting bored boredom is always the thing to be paying attention to if you start to feel like mmm yeah this is just kind of dull I'm not really being you know challenged I'm not really feeling enthusiastic about quilting you know if you're starting to feel that doldrums kind of feeling then that's something to pay attention to and I think that's certainly a situation where you want to start pushing yourself and start challenging yourself to try new things you know I'm doing English paper piecing as I said here in chat with you guys an English paper piecing is a totally different form of piecing you could absolutely use pre cuts for English paper saying you can use any type of fabric for English paper piece saying I'm right now working with you know clothing this is material from my husband's grandmother in law sorry my my grandmother in law's clothing you know so you have a much wider range of things that you can work with if you broaden your horizon and start playing with other things so if you feel bored pay attention to that watch out for that don't stay bored don't stay frustrated it is it's hard when you get in a rut like that it is very hard to bust out of it because of course it's gonna take you time to learn something new it's gonna take time to learn how to prep that yardage properly and you know get that build that skill set build that skill in your hands and skill in your fingers I've been talking to James about that a lot he's been making cookies a lot which is not all that great for me but he loves it he loves to bake but you know he bakes and every time he makes a mess in the kitchen and I was like James you're 12 years old you are old enough to be able to bake and keep the space clean it's two skill sets here you know it's the one skill set is being able to control your hands control the batter control everything that's going into the pot you know we're going going into the bowl and then the other skill set is following the instructions on the recipe right so the same thing for quilting you know when you are changing things up and trying something new you're building new skill in your hands new skill in your brain and you're probably gonna make a mess or two it's probably not gonna feel as easy as it did before but that's the that's the challenge that's where it's at basically and one more thing to think about for piecing with pre-cuts exclusively and that is the danger of miss cutting so let's say you were piecing something with this and I think I might have gotten this years ago let's say that this is a five year old pre-cut most likely those fabrics are not still available you know solids you're probably going to be able to find another one of those you know solid reading something you know you know that the brand is still around you know that those fabrics are still available you're most likely going to be able to that but a charm square a five inch square pack one of the fabrics within it you have no idea what the name is because the selvage is not on it you know you might be able to figure out from the like they put the little codes the little numbers on the back but five years later are you going to be able to cross-reference and find that online and then to be able to buy the amount that you need you know if you miss cut on something like this the easiest thing is just to go to your stash and find something similar enough and just not make it a big deal but I know and I have heard from a lot of quilters of the years but that is a point that can get them stuck that can get that that can just ruin a project you know where that miss cut happens a mistake happens they can't get more fabric and then that in decision of where to go what to do next how to fix it it creates a roadblock it really does it creates a definitive roadblock that stops that project in its tracks so that is another danger of pre-cuts you know and I think that the best way to approach that if that happens to you or has happened to you in the past is just and this would be a good thing I think to kind of talk to yourself about is just say like I had in mind what I was going to do then and I made a mistake and that whole idea is now dead it cannot work and then now I'm going to give this project new life by going in this direction and I'm giving myself permission to make a new project you know and it's then saying okay I'm gonna go pull from my stash that something similar to that color of blue or I'm gonna go pull from my stash a bright orange because you know what I want to just glam this up you know I want to add a little bit of pizzazz to my mistake you know and that's okay guys I think that when we get stuck a lot of that stuck is regret and guilt and we got to let that junk go because it's not necessary and it's not good and buying to precuts i feel like that you know especially if you don't need that much I feel like that's a little excessive you know I don't feel like you need to go that far to try and guarantee you're not going to have a mistake that can't be fixed right you know especially if you only need that one little square of fabric just find something else that will work it's not the end of the world overall I have loved precuts especially I like the solids I think the solids are really useful I will probably still end up using this even though it's you know it's got a little bit of a frayed kind of thing going on but I'll probably take this and use it I might use this for binding you know I would cut it down I typically at two inches wide rather than two and a half so yeah I can definitely find ways of using this up and making this into a quilt the reason why I've kind of gotten out of pre cuts is because the because of the value because everything ends up being a medium and all kind of blurring together and then to like the prints the prints are very busy and for me my emphasis is on the quilting I want my quilting to show I want it to stand out I want that to be visible and pretty on the surface right so that doesn't really work you know to have a super super busy print where I can't see what I'm doing and you're not gonna be able to see that pretty quilting design I've just bothered to stitch with rulers or whatever you know so I feel like that's a limitation you know that's why I say you know I like the solids I will use the solid pre-cuts absolutely but I'm leaning more and more away from the really busy printed precuts those packs and stuff those just don't work for me as well anymore when I'm in a hurry and I know like let's say I have a gift quilt to make for someone and I know their style and I know you know what's gonna fit for them really really well then I will absolutely grab a pre-cut if I think that that's gonna be a good fit or you know seasonal pre cuts are like my killer you know I will always succumb to a seasonal pre cut like Christmas pre-cut or a Halloween pre-cut and then it ends up setting in my drawer and I don't end up making anything of it so those are the various reasons why I'm kind of leaning away from that I do I like the simplicity I like being able to make a quilt in a day if that's something I'm needing to do but I have not necessarily enjoyed having fifty-plus quilt tops needing to be quilted in the amount of expense and time it's going to take to get all of those done so I would say if you're enjoying precuts keep enjoying your pre-cuts absolutely keep doing what you love that is the whole point now if you are getting bored that is a bad sign so definitely pay attention to that and start challenging yourself to move away from pre-cuts and into yardage so you can do more with it you can make bigger blocks you can really just experiment and explore a different avenue of quilting because there's some things that you can't do with pre-cuts you can't work with big giant pieces with pre cuts because you know the biggest piece is a 10-inch square right so if you're feeling bored I think you need to get away from that for a little while challenge yourself to try new things and if you're interested in learning more about cutting and piecing from yardage and making very precise quotes I have written a book on this and it is stitch it up a notch how to piece perfect quotes and it covers all of the basics from cutting piecing and then we have lots of really excellent beginner tutorials and quilts that you can create too so if that is something that is interesting you I really I think that book is gonna definitely give you some help understanding the different nuances of fabric because there's so much more to it than just unrolling something and getting started this is a great way to get started but if you want to go further with it I really think yardage is the way to go it does take more time but you know the point is to take the time that we need to make the quilt that we really want to create not just the cookie quilt you know the super quick thing but the quilt that we really want to create that best represents you know our highest contribution our you know our high level of achievement and we want to be challenged by that we do this like I said I've said this many times in the last couple of months we do this because it's hard right not because it's easy and not because it's quick we cut up fabric and sew it all back together again for that reason so think about that and if you're not feeling challenged start thinking about those you've probably been getting a little nudge from the universe as to what you need to make next so start following that nudge and see where it leads so I hope that you enjoyed this podcast and learn more about piecing with precuts the pros and the cons they are awesome I am NOT dogging out on pre-cuts I still love them and I still absolutely impulse by them I'm trying not to though because I'm moving in different directions and playing with panels I'm playing with fabric painting I'm playing with lots of new things and I'm feeling challenged going in that new direction so a lot of this is speaking directly to my heart guys because whenever we start feeling bored that is a sign something has got to change so I'm giving you permission right now if that's how you've been feeling going ahead and start thinking about that making some changes and I promise it will make you a happier quilter so that's it for this week I hope you enjoyed this podcast don't forget to sign up for the pre-order for the goddess quote book at Leah de com slash goddess that is coming up super soon so come and check it out at Leah de com slash goddess until next time let's go quote

Channel: Leah Day

Views: 8,234

Rating: 4.8483415 out of 5

Keywords: quilting friends podcast, quilting podcast, quilting business, building a business, quilting business ideas, craft podcast, craft podcasts free, podcast craft business, sewing podcast, quilting podcasts itunes, best quilting podcasts, new quilting podcasts, Leah Day, Leah Day podcast, piecing with precut fabrics, precut fabric quilts, are precut fabrics good, precut fabric ideas, Hello my quilting friends, quilting friends podcast Leah Day

Id: bkWTnZfZknM

Length: 88min 9sec (5289 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 16 2019