Well I know I was supposed to cut back this year but the best of intentions got blow by the wayside. The Fat Quarter Shop put on special some Thimbleberries Border Blast grab bags for $50 for a 12-pound box. I’ve ordered the grab bags before and they are not bad. I wasn’t too sure about the Border Blast fabric line but decided to go for it anyhow.
Largest Priority Box that you can ship from the United States to Canada – $33, yikes this fabric better be good.
Opening the box, the anticipation…
The goodies pulled out and beginning to sort to see what I have.
Turns out there is more than Border Blast material in this shipment. Most of this is from the Autumn Sunset line (never heard of it).
Smaller cuts of the Border Blast materials. The smallest cuts of all the fabric sent were 9″x45″ in other words a quarter yard of fabric.
Larger pieces of Border Blast.
All the fabric stacked together.
And for anyone that’s done a search for these fabric grab bags (I have) and wants to know the statistics here we go.
12- pound grab bag
– minimum cut is 9″x45″, maximum cut was 2-yards 28″.
– There were a total of 56 pieces of fabric of that 11 pieces were a quarter yard and 14 pieces were well over a yard in length.
– the total amount of fabric was 38.26 yards. The Fat Quarter Shop will tell you that on average you will get 2.25 – 2.5 yards of fabric per pound, it all depends on what the weave of the fabric is as some are heavier than others. I’ve ordered these grab bags before and I’m usually over this estimate but I have been bang on as well.
-cost without shipping in U.S. dollars worked out for my order $1.31/yard.
-cost for myself with the whopping $33 shipping fee, exchange rate, visa fee, worked out to $2.28/yard.
It’s not bad $2.28/yard if you’re willing to work around what you’ve been given. I have to admit that this colourway was more of an autumn/winter set so there is a lot of browns, rusts, greens in this mix and I’m not really fond of those colours but then again that’s Thimbleberries for you. Lynette Jensen usually goes for the country feel.
I was surprised at how many big pieces of fabric that I got. I don’t think that this is typical although I will admit that the Fat Quarter Shop usually sends at least a couple of larger pieces with the smaller ones. I’m pretty sure they do this so that you can use the fabric for borders. It’s almost like getting a quilt kit the only difference being that you have to come up with the quilt pattern – 38.26 yards I should be able to fudge something up.
The pieces of fabric were also uniform in cut. For example I received three pieces of “rust scattered flower buds” at 48.5 inches. Another example was an off-white, again three pieces all 22.5 inches. I know that the store was trying to sell some block of the month kits and I’m wondering if they gave up and broke the kits down and made grab bags out of the components, clever.
When I’m looking at a sale on the site I type in an amount in the order column to see how much of one item is on sale. If there are a lot on sale then I know I have time to sit and think about the item before buying it. This helps me to cut down on impulse buying. I know there were well over 30 of these fabric grab bags. Normally Thimbleberries or any other name brand designer grab bags retail over $100 for the 12-pound size. This bag was $50 so it was a very good deal. The bags sold out in a day and a half.
Sorry if this is boring but as I mentioned I’ve done Internet searches on what comes in these bags so thought I’d share.
***Edited to add that I’ve bought a second scrap bag but this one was a random pick instead of a theme. Lots of scraps but definitely not as nice as the thimbleberry bag. I wouldn’t recommend this one unless you’re a big fan of scrap quilts and even then….
Karen
Bunks' Blog 