Note To Self

Like I said in this post, I decided to make most of my Christmas gifts this year. Happy to announce that the end is in sight! Which is a good thing, because so is Christmas.

In the process, tho, I learned a great lesson I’d like to share with all of you. Especially the ones out there that sew. You’ll appreciate this most.

Don’t ever buy pre-cut cloth.

Now, for some of you that may be a no-brainer. I probably would have never done it either, until I moved to Canada. Up here, the buying cloth thing is way different. For one thing, most fabric is priced between $8-10 a meter. A meter is just a little less than a yard. .9144 of a yard, if you wanted to know exactly. Translate that into English: EXPENSIVE!!! And this is coming from the girl who broke out in hives when she had to pay over $2 a yard in the States.

The other thing is that up here pre-cut fabric is way more common than in the States. In fact, our Walmart here doesn’t have any bolts any more, its all pre-cut. There goes that option.

So when I was looking for some Christmas cloth that wasn’t going to cost both my right and left arms, I found this little pre-cut baggie of 4 different cloths that looked oh so cute together. I firmly believe that is why they started doing this pre-cut thing, because when they put them together with coordinating fabrics, they are even more eye-appealing than cloth already is. But anyway, the price seemed good, and it seemed to be enough material for what I was doing with it.

So I gave in to their marketing system and bought it. And for weeks I just looked at it, so cute in its little bag. And then I finally went to use it.

What I then realized is that the person cutting did not have me standing there watching their every move, and so this said person didn’t care what it looked like. I am convinced that this person didn’t even lay the fabric out smooth before they cut...they just unrolled and chopped. Then they ironed it so it looked smooth and folded it so that it looked square on the outside and put it together with 3 other coordinating and equally-crooked pieces of fabric, and bagged it in a oh so cute deceitful bag and sold it to this sucker. Or maybe it fed crooked through a cutting machine. Whatever the case, it was so horribly crooked that I wasted several precious inches that I had already wasted several precious pennies on.

And so, lesson learned for this seamstress. And sorry Walmart, no more business from me in your fabric department. I would rather stand there and watch a warm human body laboriously cut my fabric, thank you very much.

Have you had any problems with pre-cut fabric? (Or am I the only dumb one?) How much do you pay in your area?