Quilting 101: How To Choose Quilting Fabric

hi everyone and welcome back to my channel I have another fun video for you today this one's going to be a continuation of my quilting series and today we're going to talk about fabric fabric is of course one of the most fun and important parts of your quilting and so I'm going to cover some of the most common um pre cuts as well as yardage and then I also wanted to share a couple of my favourite stores that I like to buy from because I think I found some pretty good ones and I've had a lot of questions on that so so if you're interested in learning a little bit more about fabric then let's get started so pre cuts are one of my most favorite ways to quilt or to buy fabric and the reason is is because when you buy a pre-cut bundle it's like a great way to get a small variety of all of the fabrics in a specific line now pre cut cup pre cuts come in a lot of different sizes and there's also a lot of different projects usually your pattern will tell you which kind of a pre cut to use or it will tell you a yardage amount if you pre cuts aren't an option so I just wanted to cover em the most basic ones today and we're going to start from small to big so the first pre cut that we have here is a little this one's a little Ruby Moda pre-cut and these are two and a half inch squares and I'll do close-ups of them for you these run anywhere from about four to I've seen them like $8 somewhere in there it kind of depends on where you get them from but these are great for smaller projects I have a couple projects I'll try and link below for you on they're good for like pillows or book covers or purses bags that kind of thing and I've also used these quite frequently for posts in my quilts and posts are just like little corner pieces that kind of separate out your blocks so these are a great option the other reason that I like these is if I'm not sure I want to get a full line of fabric or not a lot of times I'll order one of these little minis and just check out all of the fabrics before I go and purchase a larger amount of them so again this is a mini charm and they are two and a half inch squares all right the next size up would be a charm pack now these are 5 inch squares and it's the same concept as the mini but as you can see they are quite a bit bigger there are patterns out specifically designed for charm packs quilt patterns and I'll try and link a few of my plate favorite places to do those too one of them is Moda Bake Shop you can actually go to their website and you can see on the sidebar they have all of the pre-cut sizes and you can click on one of them and then it will show you all of the different quilt patterns that are great for that particular size pre-cut the other reason that I like pre cuts are that it's it's a lot less expensive if you're going to buy it like a pack like this to make a quilt out of you don't end up with like a ton of excess fabric or whatever and it seems a little bit more economical if you're using a pattern that specifically calls for these so again I like these and again you get a full range of fabrics in that specific line so it's a great way to get kind of a variety of fabric that all go together the next size up is going to be these jelly rolls now jelly rolls are just these pretty little strips of fabric they're most often two and a half inches wide this way and then they're usually cut from the width of fabric which usually means that you're going to get anywhere between 40 and 43 or so inches long strips there are specific quilts that call for jelly rolls these can be a great fast way to put a quilt top together because you don't have to do any cutting the strips are already done another fun thing that you come to that I use jelly rolls for is my binding strips my binding I always do two and a half inches wide anyway and so it's a lot of fun you can get a lot of binding strips out of one of these jelly rolls and it's kind of like a scrappy binding and you can just put them all together really quickly without having to cut a bunch of strips these jelly rolls depends on which ones you buy but they typically run this is a moto jelly roll so as you can see it's quite big around some of the Riley Blake jelly rolls are a little bit thinner there's not quite as many lines in the fabric so you'll just want to look for that but typically the Moto jelly rolls are anywhere from about 25 to 35 dollars a piece so that's those the next one are the layer cakes now layer cakes are ten inch squares and just for reference here is the charm pack and then the mini charm and the layer cakes often come with some instructions on how to make quit walks on the back which are kind of fun they give you again a variety of all of the lines of fabric and they also since they're larger than the charm packs you have a little bit more of variety of what you can actually make with these they're great for rag quilts they're great for just like regular patchwork quilts pinwheels I've used these for quite frequently and actually there's just a whole slew of quilts that you could make from layer cakes and again on if you go on Moda Bake Shop you can find a bunch of different patterns and whatnot that call for layer cakes these typically run about the same cost as a jelly roll I found so somewhere around 25 to 35 ish dollars it really kind of depends on how many lines are in the bundle so you'll want to kind of check that different manufacturers have a different amount of fabrics typically there's about 40 or so in the Moda jelly rolls charm packs and layer cakes some of the Riley Blake's are more like 20 22 something like that alright the next size up is the fat eighth bundle and a fat eight bundle is basically a half of a fat quarter which we'll talk about in just a minute but typically these are cut at least the motor ones are cut nine inches wide by 22 inches long and this is a great way to get again another selection of all of the fabrics in the line but enough to give you a little more options when you're making your quilt and I've also found that this is definitely plenty of fabric to do an entire quilt top out of and have a little bit left over it kind of depends on your fabric or your pattern that you're using you have to keep in mind they're only 9 inches wide so if one of your cuts needs to be wider than that you know you might may or may not be able to do that out of a fatty bundle but these are a little bit less expensive way to get a little bit more fabric so I actually really like getting these fat eighth bundles these kind of depends again on the manufacturer but around um around 40 to maybe 60 dollars depending on how many lines are in the bundle where you get it from and that kind of thing alright the next bundle is the fat quarter bundle and fat bundle is typically 18 inches wide by 22 inches long so it's double that of the fat eight bundle and you can kind of see the size difference anyway and these are probably one of my most favorite bundles because it gives you quite a bit of fabric and you can for sure get one two maybe two quilt tops out of this bundle depending on again how big your quilt is and what pattern you use again these are going to vary on price depending on how many fat quarters are in a bundle typically the Mota ones have around 40 fat quarters in a bundle but as you can see here's another mode of fat quarter bundle this one is little red and it's super cute but it's got about half the amount of fabric as this other one which this one is vintage montón vintage picnic by bonnie and Camille so you can see the price will also reflect the amount that you're getting and then here's another cute one this one is vintage market by Tasha Noel but and I haven't counted them I think there's around 20 fat quarters in this but your price on your bundle will vary um based on how many you have so these are going to run anywhere from I would say you know like fifty to sixty dollars for the half kind of size bundle up to eighty two sometimes one hundred and sometimes even a little bit higher for this kind of bundle now that might seem like a lot but again it really depends on the line that you get where you buy it from um and so we're going to talk about that in just a little bit the last thing I want to show you is some yardage so of course you can always buy fabric by the bolt or you can go to like your local quilt store and buy yardage now because I use so much white in my backgrounds of my quilts and if you follow me on Instagram at all you already know that but I actually buy these by the bolt because it's a lot more economical for me to buy an entire bolt of fabric I always get the same exact color of white that way I can use whatever scraps I have leftover I don't have to worry about matching you know different whites because believe me there are a thousand different colors of whites out there can be very intimidating or you'll end up with a little pile of scraps and then you can't really match them to another quilt if you go by a different way so I just kind of keep one of these bolts on hand and then I don't really have to worry about it of course you don't have to buy it higher bolt fabric you can go to your local pool store and buy off of the bolt and my suggestion on that is just to buy whatever your pattern requires or if you're in a quilt store a lot of one of the questions like it is how much fabric do you buy if you're just there and you find a piece of fabric that you like I will tip alike typically get may be either half a quarter of a fabric that I like I'll try and usually pick out a few coordinating ones if I don't have a specific plan for it just so I know that it will at least match something or a half a yard of fabric is also a great option because that gives you a little bit more flexibility if you want to make a bag with it or quilt or if you really just don't know you can kind of do a lot with a half a yard of fabric so if there's something you really really love um you're like worried maybe it's not going to be there or whatever half a yard is usually a good way to go a lot of times when we go to the stores my daughter's will have them cut a quarter vdr for them now the difference between a fat quarter and a quarter of a yard is a fat quarter is is basically same amount of fabric it's just fatter so it's 18 inches wide by 22 inches tall whereas a quarter of a yard cut is going to be 9 inches wide by with the fabric so you're still getting um two strips that are 22 inches long technically if you put them side-by-side but it's just a skinnier strip so again if you're not sure what you want to do is that a fat quarter or a fat quarter or a quarter of a yard isn't also a good way to go alright so this is typically what a fat quarter looks like so it's kind of deceiving because it looks like a tiny little piece but then when you open it up you end up with this nice big chunk of fabric and it's even just slightly bigger than my cutting board here so that's 18 by 22 inches typically and then if you were to cut this in half down this line to make it this big this is what a fat eight typically looks like you can have them cut it the opposite way but if you order a bundle at least for Moda anyways this is the size that you're going to get it so I wanted to take a quick minute and show you a couple of different patterns that I've made and tell you which pre-cut I have used them for so you can kind of get an idea of all of your different she's out there so let me go grab a few of my quilts and then I'll meet you right back here now here's a great example of a quilt that can use a jelly-roll now this is just a standard log cabin and there are two and a half inch squares and so all you really have to do is cut the lengths of the strips in order to continue sewing on around your log cabin and so that makes this pattern super easy here's another fun fat eighth or fat quarter bundle quilt this particular one is one of the blocks from the fat quarter shop snapshots quilt along and this block is called gone surfin by symbol blossoms it's super cute I've also seen versions of Christmas trees on top and so you can probably find those on Instagram but I just wanted to show you another version of a fat eighth or fat quarter bundle here's another one I did this one is called swoon and this one uses a fat quarter bundle and you really do need an entire fat quarter to do this just because if the cutting instructions are very specific this quilt is very large I'll put the measurements up on the screen here for you but I just wanted to show you an option and then those little squares down there were two and a half inch squares that I cut from some of my scraps as well alright and I wanted to show you this one this quilt is actually quite large and this one was done out of a fat eighth bundle this is called Summerville and it's a pattern by thimble blossoms and the fabric is vintage picnic by bonnie and Camille and I just want to show you how much you can really get out of those fat eighth bundles aside from a little bit of extra for the borders around the end of course the backing and then the white background all of the color pieces that you see were cut from fat eighth blocks and this thing is huge so as you can see those are a great option when you're wanting to buy a variety of fabrics all right here's a really fun one this is called great granny square the pattern is by Lori Holt and this is that a little miss sunshine fabric that I was telling you about this is also a great pattern for the two and a half inch mini charms as you can see that's a lot of cutting or you can buy a few packs of mini charms and put them together really really quickly so that's another option for the mini charms all right I just wanted to show you this quote really fast because this is actually a mix of fabric and while I typically use all 100% cotton quilting fabric this portion is the quilting fabric this right here is actually a white flannel and then the inside layer is a white fleece and then on the back side I did this kind of fuzzy kind of Mickey background so this one was for my daughter she likes fuzzy stuff and soft stuff and so I just wanted to encourage you that you can mix fabrics if you are going to mix a flannel and a cotton together I would just suggest you pre wash the flannel because the flannel actually shrinks quite a bit more than the quilting cotton so it'll give you a little bit of a more even shrinkage once you put the entire finished piece in the wash I wanted to show you this quilt as well because I wanted to give you a couple of options for using up your scrap pieces and this particular quilt is one that I made using just a cardboard template for the leaves and then I just cut out small leaves out of a variety of different fabrics and then put them on to this quilt and I do have this on my blog so you can kind of see how that was made this particular one is a pattern by Cory Yoder and it's called playful petals and I also did some hand stitching on this as well so there's lots of options out there all right this is another quilt that I want to show you this one is done using blocks from the farm girl vintage book by Lori Holt and as you can see it uses a lot of tiny little pieces and this is a great way to use up your fabric stash as if you start quilting at all you're going to start having a bunch of leftover pieces and this is just mixing and matching them into a fun kind of colorful quilt is a great way to go alright and I wanted to show you this as well this little patchwork quilt is one that my seven-year-old made all by herself this is using the 5 inch charm squares and she did a great job shown the back side she did a nice soft fleecy back side on it and she just sewed her quilt top in the back side right sides together and then turned it inside out and just finished it up and did a little top stitch all the way around the outside of the quilt so that's another good option for using the 5 inch charms this one hearts is easy and my favorite all right so that's kind of a variety of fabric out there now I just briefly want to talk about where I get my fabric from I get a lot of questions about that and especially if you're in new quilter or sowe're than you might not be sure some of the best places to get it so my first favorite spot to get my fabric is fat Porter shop now they have a variety of fun fabrics that usually have the newest lines and one of my favorite things from them is that they package it really nice in a plastic wrapping so if it gets you know left on your porch or something it doesn't get wet if they also have crazy fast shipping I mean it's like as soon as you order something half the time I've received it before I even get the shipping notification for it they also have a lot of fun projects they have a YouTube channel with a lot of tutorials on I just signed up for a mystery block of the month and they mail you a package with a pattern and all of the fabric every month and then by the time you're done you'll have kind of a sampler type quilt to put together that's a lot of fun and they just have really good customer service and the ladies that are really nice one of my other favorite places to get fabric is on Etsy a lot of times they have a lot better prices on Etsy just because they're like people like you and me who've started up a fabric shop online they don't have some of the overhead and so it can make their prices really reasonable and most of the places I found had great shipping good customer service and they're really willing to work with you as far as if you need something not listed on their website or custom order my very favorite Etsy shop is stitches in giggles she has one of the by far best prices that I found she has excellent customer service she's super super nice and she always has crazy fast shipping but there are tons of different places on Etsy so if you can't find what you're looking for at like an online store Etsy is like probably one of my go-to places another fun place I like to get fabric is on Instagram Instagram has a great hashtag the great fabric D stash and there's lots of people out there just like you and me who maybe have bought something and aren't going to use it or they bought more than they manage to use up or they're selling some of their scraps so that's a great place to check the only thing I would say about buying off of Instagram is to make sure that the seller sends you an invoice via PayPal and not a request for money employees will protect you if the services come your if the goods come damaged or for example if they don't come at all they don't get shipped whatever they will protect the buyer a send money request is essentially like just handing someone cash and so you're kind of just taking their word for that they'll ship stuff to you and I've never had any issues on there but I know people who have so just protect yourself and if they don't send you an invoice just request that they send you at an invoice format via PayPal the last place I like to go are my local quilt shops now I love supporting local businesses I like that you can walk in and you can kind of touch and feel the fabric in person and so it just makes it like a fun buying experience the ladies are usually super nice and like I said I really enjoy supporting our local quilt shops and then of course as I mentioned on my other videos I do have like an amazing giveaway for you today's giveaway is sponsored by fat order shop and they're giving away a fat eight bundle of this beautiful Kate Spade fabric she's one of my favorite designers and this is a nice Christmas bundle to get you started and if you think it's too early think again I usually start my Christmas coats right about now mid year that gives me plenty of time to get them pieced quilted and all done in time for Christmas so if you want to enter to win this giveaway I'll put my link to my blog below and you just need to head over there and enter to win so I hope you enjoyed this video talking all about fabric if you have any questions you're welcome to email me at Eric at confessions of the homes for calm and I will do my best to help you out so I hope you enjoyed this one and I will see you for the next one you

Channel: Erica Arndt

Views: 94,766

Rating: 4.9437714 out of 5

Keywords: Quilting, Tutorial, Fabric, Sewing, How To

Id: sEJd53EDNmI

Length: 18min 55sec (1135 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 21 2016