Sometimes I just want to sit down and sew. The hum of my sewing machine is meditative, and I enjoy the calm it can bring me.
Maybe it’s been a long day after a busy week at work. Maybe I’ve got a special concern for a friend or a situation on my mind that I can’t stop turning over and over in my thoughts. Maybe my plate is just chockablock full of errands and tasks and I need a quick break for myself! During those moments, I don’t necessarily want to think about design or make fabric choices. I want repetition, action, and rhythm.
I just want to sew. And when that need hits, I turn to precuts.
Charm packs, jelly rolls, layer cakes (oh my!) and fat quarter bundles are available just about everywhere. I confess that when precuts started making their way to the market, I was a little skeptical. Under most circumstances, I tend to mix and match different lines of fabric in quilt projects. I love options and choices! So, picking up a stack from a single designer or fabric line, where all the choices had already been made for me, didn’t necessarily interest me at first. I also looked at my stash and thought that I just needed to cut up what I already owned – I mean, I have perfectly good rulers and rotary cutters and know how to use them!
If I only knew then what I know now.
I didn’t anticipate the way these awesome collections would wiggle their way into my quilting life. They have become a standard in my sewing room for a few reasons, the first being that it’s a fun way to get straight to the sewing parts of a project quickly. Secondly, choosing from precuts (including fat quarter bundles) also keep me from accumulating excess yardage when I don’t know what I’m making but am really inspired by fabrics that have caught my eye. Last, but certainly not least, precuts allow me to have a snack size taste of a wider variety of fabrics…and let’s face it, there are a LOT of gorgeous fabrics out there! (And bonus reason? My stash stays neater and has more variety since I’ve been buying precuts, too!)
So, while I wasn’t sure about them at the beginning, I’ve definitely changed my tune about precuts.
Are you a precut lover, too? What’s your favorite purchase so far?