Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Quilting pet peeve...

I just bought a book of quilt patterns that are absolutely adorable!! I started one today that I know I will love when it is finished...but here is my pet peeve: one of the fabric requirements listed is forty-nine 10" squares, and then you cut them into 5 1/2" squares. WHAT? Look at all the fabric you just wasted! I'm sure the point is to sell more layer cake pre-cuts, but I hate to waste fabric! Why not just start out by saying I need forty-nine 5 1/2" squares out of different fabrics? The list of fabric requirements goes on like that. Twelve more 10" squares that you cut off two pieces that are 1 1/2" by 3 1/2" of each 10" square? Twelve more that you just cut two 1 1/2" squares from???

Now we both know that I can use these  10" squares to cut more than one piece off of, but the pattern actually calls for all of these 10" squares. I don't know how much fabric I will need to cut things sensibly, the pattern doesn't give any other dimension options.  So here I am making one block at a time so I'm not wasting tons of fabric. Sigh. Just wanted to vent. Am I abnormal? Does this bother anyone but me?

9 comments:

  1. YES!! That annoys me so much! And it seems to be happening more often, I often wonder if designers are compromising quality for quantity....

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  2. That is a lot of waste. Is the author a new quilter and doesn't know any different?

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  3. I do not waste any fabric sew I would be like you and cut a little at a time so no fabric would be wasted. Is there another pattern in the book that goes with this one so those 10" squares are not wasted?

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  4. Oy vey, I'd be buggy about that one, too. It's annoying. Good thing is that you have scraps for other projects, but that might not be everyone's aim.

    boo!

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  5. I find that annoying too... with the price of fabric these days I appreciate patterns that make the most of it. I keep everything from the teeniest scraps now!

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  6. Even as a new quilter, this drives me insane.

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  7. Oh yeah! Designers are trying to utilize all of the fancy precuts that are flooding the quilt shops and not thinking about the heart of quilting...use every last bit of your fabric to make something useful. Don't advertise a pattern as using precuts if you don't use "most" of each piece! I'd much rather buy yardage, unfortunately it's more costly to get the variety.

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    Replies
    1. So glad to know my "peeve" is shared by others!

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