Quilting Fabric ABCs

Some quilters never pre-wash their fabrics. Others always prewash, because they don't want any surprises when they wash a quilt for the first time. Use these prewashing pros and cons as a guide to help you decide whether to wash your fabrics before using them or jump right in and start cutting.

Fabric grain is one of those quilting topics that you might not think is important, but the way you cut your fabric in relation to its grain can make or break a quilt.

This simple burn test will help you determine if a fabric is one hundred percent cotton, and if it isn't cotton fabric, give you a few clues to its content.

Some quilting cottons bleed, especially vivid colors like red and purple. Bleeding means the fabrics will lose dyes when they are washed and those dyes can stain the other fabrics in your quilt. Perform this easy bleed test on your cotton fabrics before you use them in a project.

We throw the term "fat quarters" around a lot and new quilters always wonder what it means. This explanation and illustration will help you see how a fat quarter differs from a standard quarter-yard cut.

Tips to help quilters build a balanced fabric stash.

Read tips from online quilters who took a bit of time to tell us about their favorite stash-building methods.

Our About Quilting forum members have a lot of fun swapping quilting fabrics. One of the most lively forum discussions is fabric noodles swap--long, narrow strips of fabric that can be used for an endless number of quilting blocks and projects.

Say goodbye to all those strings--use this quick tip to help keep your quilting fabrics from fraying when you prewash them.

An introduction to Sally Fox, inventor of FoxFiber, naturally-colored cotton.

A look back at the history of denim fabric.