You’re gazing at the satisfying view of layer cakes, jelly rolls, honey buns, charm squares, mini charm squares in your favorite little shop. You ponder your selection and you deeply inhale the decadent scents of…. fabric?
Leave it to Moda to name their drool-worthy precuts after equally drool-worthy baked goods! They’re super convenient because they all act as samplers of an entire fabric line. So you can use one or mixes of multiples to create your next project. Let’s dig in (no forks allowed) and learn more about these handy cuts!
Layer Cakes are the largest cut of the pre-cut stacks. Forty-two 10” squares will make a good sized sampler quilt on its own, or you can play around with size/shapes to get the maximum usage from your fabric. For example, with a 3/8” seam allowance, you could get twenty five 1” squares from one layer cake square. With 1/4” seam allowance, you could get thirty six!
A Jelly Roll is an English Paper Piecer’s dream. It’s made up of forty 2-1/2” strips of fabric that can be further cut into squares to fit the shapes you’re working on. The roll itself is comprised of a single fabric collection, so you don’t have to worry about finding multiple yardages of fabric to match up. From a jelly roll, you can cut lots of different shapes and have your seam allowance already built in! Whether you want to use jewels, hexagons, squares, diamonds, trapezoids, triangles, or a mixture, as long as these shapes are 1” or under, jelly rolls are an excellent choice for color variation!
Honey Buns pack a slightly smaller nibble than Jelly Rolls; they are rolls of forty 1-1/2” strips. If you’re into mini projects, this is a perfect little fabric roll for you!
Charm squares and mini squares are lovely; you don’t *have* to cut them unless you just want to! Charm squares are stacks of about forty-two 5” squares that will fit up to a 2” hexagon with a 3/8” seam allowance, or a 2-1/2” hexagon with a 1/4” seam allowance. Mini charms are the adorable little sister to charm packs- cute little stacks of 2-1/2 squares! Mini charms come in our EPP starter kit and we recommend 1” hexagons for them. You don’t have to trim! Just baste, sew, and go! What a dream.
In terms of cost, all of these precut bundles can seem more expensive per yard than actual yardage, but you can’t beat the convenience of not having to cut all that fabric. Also, you’ll get a sampling of a line you absolutely love without having to buy the entire line.
These delicious little precuts are aptly named- they’re handy, portable, and easy to purchase by the dozen!
1 comment
I fell in love with EPP after making lots of hexagons from stacks of mini charms and discovering different ways to combine them. Now I want to play with jelly rolls. What size trapezoid would fit a 2.5 strip with 3/8 seam allowance? Thanks