tooMuchFabric

Interesting. I did not know about all this new movement in industry standards.

It's to some corporate advantage, I'm sure.

janRN

QKO thanks for the information. I purchased fabric from ConnectingThreads with the wide printed selvages: the printed side was about 1 1/4" wide and the unprinted selvage about an inch. I didn't think CT fabrics were seconds; am I wrong? Their prices are lower than most but the fabric seems fine.

Thanks again for the info.

QKO

CT claims on their website that they "work directly with the mills." That's usually code for "they buy mill seconds and overstocks." Printing errors, and other things that are out of spec will qualify a fabric as a second.

Just because it's a second, doesn't mean it's bad fabric, it just means it's not up to the original buyer's specifications in some way.

Or, if CT is specifying their own fabrics and having them printed directly, they may be cutting price by adhering to lower quality standards in the printing process. If you don't reject fabric runs because of printing errors, your costs will necessarily go down.

Again, you're not necessarily going to get bad fabrics, but the quality may be somewhat inconsistent.

Annz

Wow!! Thanks. I never thought of measuring them, but will now.

Annz

Wow!! Thanks. I never thought of measuring them, but will now.

bjdemir

I believe I have seen somewhere that JoAnn's does not cut their fat quarters but receive them already cut. Most LQS do cut their own as you can usually find the same material on the bolt. I have had them cut a fat quarter for me from the bolt also.

butterflywing

another thing that i'm seeing more and more is that the print is going all the way across and covering up the selvedge. what's that all about? i bought timeless treasures recently and because it has no visible dots on the selvedge, i couldn't easily see the color spectrum i was trying to match. that was first quality from a good mill from a LQS.

tooMuchFabric

Hmmmm.
I recently bought a significant number of FQs at one time for a particular project;
washed and dried them;
then starched and ironed them.

I was aggravated to notice that they were all different degrees of edge alignments, and also of a disagreeable variation in dimensions from one another, in width as well in length.
In a word, wonky.

Can't do anything at this point about their sizes, but thought maybe I had skewed them in the starching and ironing process;
so I rewashed and restarched and reironed them, carefully.

Turns out I had done it right the first time, more's the pity.

So I can see what you are saying about a FQ being not necessarily a FQ anymore these days.

bearisgray

Just so you know that this is NOT a new thing -

My Mom had given me some packaged fat quarters - over ten years ago - and they were only 17- 7/8 inches long - on the longer edge!

tryitall

Good reply!!!!