Sewing 101, Tutorials, Uncategorized

Sewing Back-to-School: Fat quarters, half-yards and charm packs, oh my!

This post is part of the Sewing Back-to-School series, 30 days of helpful sewing articles by guest bloggers. Feel free to check out the original Sewing Back-to-School post for schedule and previous posts!

Today’s guest post is by Elizabeth from Don’t Call Me Betsy. Elizabeth is always working on so many quilts that it makes my head spin! She has some great free tutorials on her website, but my favorite that I have been lusting after is the Mini Bookshelf Quilt pictured above. It’s so cool, I can hardly contain myself!

Hi everyone, I’m Elizabeth from Don’t Call Me Betsy.  Thanks Sara, for having me over to talk fabric today!  I love fabric.  I love to look at it, I love to touch it, I love to shop for it, I love to iron it, I love to cut it up, and I love to sew it all together.  But…I understand, shopping for fabric can be a little bit tricky.  There’s lots of size-related lingo, and I’d love to make it all make sense for you today.  We’re going to go from biggest to smallest – starting with a yard of fabric.
Standard fabric cuts
A yard is 36″ x width of fabric (WOF, which means from selvage to selvage on a bolt of fabric), and is a good cut to purchase for making bags or children’s clothing.  It’s also a great cut to purchase for making multiple quilt bindings, since you can usually make a lap quilt binding from approximately a half-yard of fabric.  When you’re talking about quilting cottons, the WOF is typically 44″, but home dec fabrics’ WOF can range from 45″ to 60″.
When I shop for fabric, if I’m buying fabric to add to my stash, rather than for a specific project, I tend to buy half-yards.  A half-yard of fabric is exactly 18″ x WOF, which for quilting cottons is typically 44″, including the selvages.  A half-yard is usually the perfect size to allow you to have enough to play with for most quilt patterns.

OMG - It's here!!!!!
Stack of lovely half-yards of Joel Dewberry’s Heirloom collection

A quarter-yard can be hard to come by, unless you live near a local quilt shop.  Most online quilt shops do not cut quarter-yards, with two major exceptions – Fabric Shack and Sew Mama Sew.  I tend to pick up quarter-yards when I need just a little bit of something, sometimes for a mini-quilt or a pillow, or for a bee block.  A quarter-yard is a long, skinny rectangle, measuring 9″ x WOF.

Specialty Fabric Cuts
The next cut of fabric we’re going to discuss is a fat quarter.  A fat quarter is a half-yard of fabric (18″ x 44″), cut in half lengthwise, yielding a piece of fabric that is 18″ x 22.”  A fat quarter is approximately the same amount of fabric you wind up, as far as the area is concerned, as you would with a quarter-yard cut, but you have a lot more flexibility with a fat quarter because it is not a long skinny rectangle, like a quarter-yard (see above).  You’ll find lots of fat quarters at most local quilt shops as well as various online fabric stores.  Fat quarters are great to have around for bee blocks, and for many quilt patterns.  They are the most common of the “specialty” cuts and have been on the market for the longest.

Tristan's quilt
This quilt was produced with an assortment of fat quarters, and the pattern is available on my blog right here.

Even smaller than a fat quarter is a fat eighth.  A fat eighth is a quarter yard of fabric, measuring 9″, cut in half across the width of fabric (WOF), yielding a piece of fabric that is 9″ x 22″ rather than the typical one-eighth yard cut of 4.5″ x WOF.  Typically, you’ll only find fat eighths in bundles, and Moda, in particular, specializes in these bundles for larger fabric collections.

Terrain Fat Eighth Bundle
Kate Spain’s Terrain Fat Eighth Bundle

Pre-Cuts

Many fabric manufacturers currently offer various precut fabric bundles, giving you a great opportunity to own a whole collection of fabric with a smaller pricetag.  Moda Fabrics offers the biggest variety of precuts currently, but they are also offered by Robert Kaufman Fabrics, Riley Blake Fabrics, Free Spirit Fabrics, and a few other manufacturers.  There are charm packs, honey buns, jelly rolls, and layer cakes.
Charm packs are 5″ squares of fabric bundled together.  Typically, a charm pack will consist of forty-two different charm squares, but sometimes smaller fabric collections will yield a smaller charm pack.  Charm packs are perfect for making simple patchwork quilts, and also work great for baby quilts.
The sun setting on my quilt
This holiday quilt was completed with a total of 2 charm packs, for the prints, and more details can be found here.
Honey buns are a total of 1.5″ strips, wound together in a bun, which looks super cute, and can be a great item to pick up for string projects or log cabins.  The number of strips varies from manufacturer to manufacturer, but can range from between twenty to forty strips.
Jelly roll vs. a honey bun
A jelly roll vs. a honey bun – made of the same number of strips, but the strips are sized differently
Jelly rolls or designer rolls are made of 2.5″ x WOF strips of fabrics.  Jelly rolls are fantastic to use for bindings, and can also be used to make any kind of strip-based quilt block, such as a rail fence or postage stamp.  You can also use jelly rolls for sashing, as their size works well for sashing.  Most jelly rolls contain between thirty and forty-two strips.
A fun block for Lee
This quilt block was assembled using a jelly roll – more details here
Layer cakes are 10″ squares of fabric.  Again, the number of squares will vary depending on the fabric manufacturer, but usually you’ll see at least twenty squares in a layer cake, and as many as forty-two.  When you fall in love with a fabric collection with larger scale prints, a layer cake can be the best precut to pick up, since the cuts are so large.
If you ever have a fabric question, don’t hesitate to pop over to my blog ask me!  Some of my friends joke that I am a walking fabric-o-pedia, as though I have some kind of photographic memory when it comes to fabrics (but nothing else!).  I’d love to hear from you.  🙂  Happy fabric shopping!

8 thoughts on “Sewing Back-to-School: Fat quarters, half-yards and charm packs, oh my!

  1. Debbie says:

    Nice post – thank you!

  2. Laura says:

    Online, Connecting Threads also sells quarter yards. Great post!

  3. Awesome job! One addition might be that some cut their fat eighths the other direction, yielding a fatter yet shorter 11×18 rectangle. I’ve heard arguments over which is “right” or not, but who knows?? It gives you a wider more “fat” shape, but then you’ve turned the design on its side again. Hmm…

    Great summary, though! Well written!

  4. I am new at this. What can you typically use a fat eighth for ?

  5. annika says:

    I am going to make my own cheat sheet with these examples as I am new to sewing!!! But do you know if they sell these terms and dimensions as a laminated cheat sheet??

  6. Terri says:

    I’m new to quilting, so I have lots of questions. I found a quilt pattern I want to make. It calls for 10″ layer cakes. Can I use fat quarters instead and cut them to size?

    1. Sara Lawson says:

      You sure can! A fat quarter is usually 18″ x 22″, so you’d be able to get two 10″ squares from a fat quarter (with some fabric left over).

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