Skip to Content

Quilt Process Step 3: Purchasing the fabric and Prewashing

Thank you so much for sharing!

The fabric we chose was…

The next step was to buy the fabric.  I wanted to get a good deal, so I searched around a found an etsy store that carried fabric that had this line at a good price.  I asked her to create a custom listing for me with the amount of fabric I wanted.

I bought 1/2 yards of sky airplanes, bright airplanes, chocolate helicopters, bright helicopters and bermuda cars in the Ready Set Go line and then the 1/2 yards of the chocolate argyle and bermuda stripe from the sister line by Anne Kelle, Remix.  I wasn’t sure exactly how much to get because I was doing lettering applique for the first time. 

Then I went to my local fabric store to match this printed fabric with a Kona solid.  I liked the green from this line, but since it is organic, it was over $10 a yard for the solid which seemed a little steep to me since Kona is very good quality and $6.99.  I picked out the Kona Sour Apple.  I had to do this step in person since the computer screen can be tricky when trying to match fabric for separate lines of fabric and different manufacturers.  I don’t like to pay retail for Kona because places like fabric.com and others often sell it at a discount, but I decided to pay the premium and support my local fabric store, especially since I was using their selection to make my choice.  One of these days I’ll splurge and get a Kona sample card!

Once I got the fabric in the mail… Woo!

The next thing I did was prewash.  I am not normally a prewasher.  When you buy high quality quilting fabric, it is not usually a necessary step BUT I made an exception this time because I did not want to take any chances especially on a commission.  I was also going to be using fusible webbing for the applique lettering and the instructions say to use prewashed fabric.

After it was washed and dried, I trimmed the edges and ironed AND starched all of it.  I hate this step, but oh well!

Next up: The cutting and assembling the first block!