Fat Quarter Shop 12-pound Grab Bag Review

I recently ordered a grab bag from fatquartershop.com.  If you read my other grab bag review (from Craft Connection), you'll know I was disappointed- a lot of the fabric was poor quality and it didn't amount to much savings per yard.

This review is the opposite of that. I bought a 12-pound grab bag from Fat Quarter Shop. The UPS label said it weighed 13 pounds- so they did a great job filling this box up!

This box doesn't look that big...

http://www.fatquartershop.com/12-pound-fabric-grab-bag
It cost $78.99 with shipping, so not cheap (right now though there is a coupon code ddapron, I believe- It would have saved me $14!!! but I looked all over for a week before I ordered and couldn't find a code. Now I'm kicking myself of course.)

This fabric was all top quality, first rate fabric. Name brands like Michael Miller, Timeless Treasures, Moda.  Almost everything was yardage - selvedge to selvedge cuts. So little of it was other cuts, I actually didn't include them in my totals.

Non-selvage cuts: one 10" square, one 1/3 yd x 1/2 yd rectangle, two 6.5" x 10.5" rectangles.

So what about the rest? There were 75 pieces. They ranged from 5" to 32". The length I got the most of was 18", with 20 pieces. The second most common length was 23", with 9 pieces. And the third most common was 16", with 6 pieces. Typing out this paragraph makes me want to break out my Fathom statistical software. I could tell you all kinds of statistics about the fabric lengths (such as the average length being 16.5" inches, or the median being 18"- which as I already pointed out is the mode.  Do you want to know how many are within 1 standard deviation?)

This stack really doesn't SEEM that big...

But that would be boring.  More interesting might be to know that in all I got 34.3 yards of fabric. Which means the price works out to $2.30 per yard.  Since all of it is great quality useable fabric, I'm pretty happy with this. Even the designs I won't use will be great backings for small wall quilts. (My wall quilts always have absurd backs.)

And even more interesting might be pictures of the fabric:
Polka Dots

 Geometric Prints

 Solids (wish I got more of these!)

 Stripes and Chevrons:

 Floral and Leaves (the second from the left on the bottom row is my favorite fabric- a gorgeous tree print that I just want to frame as is.)

 Novelty fabrics:

 A group I couldn't categorize (I LOVE this peacock!):

 Kids fabrics:

 Another group I couldn't really categorize:

I am just SO in love with this box.  Once I use a quarter or half of it, I might buy another one.  But I think I am going to be really patient and wait for a coupon code!

Craft Connection Scrap Bag Reviews

I just realized I never posted these reviews- I got these scrap bags in October 2013.  Someone on quiltingboard.com had recommend CraftConn.com as a place to get some good scraps. We had just had a guild speaker talk about scrap quilts- and really, I don't have many scraps :(  So I want to build up the collection just a bit.  This definitely helped do that!

Since getting these bags, I actually haven't done any scrap quilts, but I've used a lot of the solid fabrics to back small quilts. Usually it has had to be pieced (often just with itself to make a different dimension), but it has been getting used :)

So here is what I got:

Now let's talk about it is.
I got two 1 lb solid scrap bags ($4.14 each), one 1 lb bright scrap bag ($10.50), and one 1 pound pink scraps bag ($8.00).  Shipping was $12.35.  In retrospect- the bright and pink are kind of expensive because at the time fabric.com's 3 pound scrap bag was $19.99 (though it is now double that), and fatquartershop offers a large grab bag for a lot less per pound (but a higher cost over all).  However, in the case of craftconn, you get what you pay for. The scraps in the bright and pink bag are just much better fabric than the solids. The solids are pretty shabby- many of them are pilling already- right out of the box!  I was pretty disappointed by that.

I figured out that the fabric cost me $2.95 a yard overall.  Since I'm using it, it isn't that bad, but fabric.com often has sale fabric for that price- so I could have just gone and selected a few of those cuts if I want it for backing and test blocks. However, since I wanted a variety of colors and patterns, that wouldn't have worked for me here.

Since I planned to review the scrap bags (and I PLANNED on being more prompt) I measured all the fabric. The bags ranged from 3.2 yards to 3.5 yards each.  I split the shipping cost per box and a pound ranged from $2.06 to $4.12 per yard.

Here is what I got:
Solid bag #1 (1 pound; weighed 1.01 pounds)
17" cut of yellow, pink, green, blue
1 Fat Quarter of blue (very faded, unfortunately)
9.5" cut of black, and two of white
6" cut of black
14" cut of thin muslin
This was 3.2 yards, the bag was $4.14 + $3.09 for shipping or $7.23 total; $2.26 a yard.

Solid bag #2 (1 pound; weighed 15.9 ounces)
17" cut of brown, beige, yellow, pink, green, blue
15" cut of white
11" cut of black
3" scrap of black
This was 3.5 yards, bringing it to $2.06 a yard

Bright bag (1 pound; weighed 15.9 ounces)
16" cut of pink and rainbow
15" cut of stripes, red, and orange
7" cut of green
9" cut of green and dolls
6 Fat Quarters
1 9" square
This was 3 1/3.  The bag plus shipping was $13.59, bringing it to $4.12 a yard.

Pink Bag (1 pound; weighed 15.9 ounces)
5"- one cut
17"- 2 cuts
2 Fat Quarters
14 Fat Eighths
This was 3 1/3 yards. The bag was a total of $11.09, making it $3.33 a yard.


So overall- I can use what I got, but I don't plan to buy a grab bag from this place again. The solids were crappy fabric, and the other fabrics were too expensive for unknowns.