looking for cheater fabric

Hi, guys

My mom is looking for cheater fabric for quilting. Our quilting group has chosen a service project for a local nursing home and we each will be making in the neighborhood of 20+ lap quilts for the residents. They will be on the smaller size, no larger than 42x45 and Mom thought that some cheater fabric might help the work go quicker.

Anyone have any good sources for affordable cheater fabric? I've been puttering on ebay but we won't be getting any before the first of the month so what's on ebay right now doesn't help much.

BTW, for those that do the smaller adult-oriented charity quilts, what is your favorite pattern to use? I'm a new quilter, so beginner patterns will be my plan of attack. :lol:

Many thanks for your help!
M&M

I make quiltsforkids and find the Diappearing 9 Patch works up fast and looks nice.
Cheater fabric - probably could find at JoAnn's Fabric or if you have a WalMart nearby that still sells fabric.
Good luck

Okay, I'll bite - what is cheater fabric?????????

This is cheater fabric Sandy.Looks like you pieced it but it is all printed at the same time. At least that what I think cheater fabric is. Am I right girls????

cheater fabric? never heard that term.

That would be it.

Sometimes you can use pillow panels or other panels, but they aren't usually that inexpensive, even at wally world. I've seen it with preprinted "quilt blocks" and used to have tons, until a house fire that kinda screwed it (and a lot of other stuff) up. Hard to quilt ashes. Sometimes you'll find lots of squares printed on fabric and you can cut out a larger square and quilt on the lines that separate the smaller squares so it looks like you took a ton of itty bitty squares and made bigger ones out of them.

For those who don't know, it's fabric that's printed to look like you spent hours piecing the fabric. Layer it in a quilt sandwich and quilt away, usually following the lines between the "pieced" pieces printed on the fabric. When you're all done, it looks like it was pieced, but you "cheated" and were just following the lines. Clear as mud yet? :lol:

It might be a trade off. I could spend time piecing (and probably ripping) and not so much on quilting or no time practically on piecing and a ton on quilting. Anyway, I'll look around next time I'm in the area at JoAnns, Hancocks, Hobby Lobby & some of the wally worlds around that still sell fabric. Didn't know if you guys knew anyone online to dream about in the meantime.

Thanks!!
M&M

OMG I thought it was a typo.... cheater... cheaper!!! LOL! thanks for the info. :o)

Okay, brilliant description. I don't know what I've called that in the past - preprinted quilt panels? Anyway, I don't use those things except for baby blankets and only occasionally.

I found some that had inspirational phrases on them at Joann's, they weren't any cheaper than the regular yardage. I haven't seen them in a while either.

The churn dash/monkey wrench pattern is good if you have a bunch of different fabrics for the centers and then you can surround them with a coordinating solid and make the background a nice white or cream neutral. Makes a nice scrappy pattern and you can adjust the size of the block to make lots of littles or a few bigs. Fairly simple to assemble and no points to really match.

I order my panels from Fabric.com. They are usually really inexpensive and quite large (depending on what you order).

http://www.fabric.com/quilting-fabri...Source=LeftNav

At my church the senior quilting ladies make quilts for disaster victims. They rarely purchase fabric (I know this is a Quilting Shop and sells fabric site we are all enjoying), but willingly they accept donations of leftover fabric, tablecloths, sheets and bedlinens. If any of the fabric was not new, they wash it first before sewing any items. If you have a local Craig's List you could put a list for requests of free fabric suitable for quilting. Another source would be garage sales.
Every few months, the quilts are hung over the church pews on display - they are beautiful! - and prayers are said for the individuals experiencing a disaster and will be receiving the quilts; then they are shipped out to world relief.
Blessings with your service project. Am certain those receiving the lap blankets will really appreciate them.

Rfree...you got it! BTW nice cheater fabric. I usually get a lot of panels when I find them on sale and use them on quick quilts when I need them in a flash. Of course you can always dress up those panels with pinwheel blocks or something else. JoAnns is a good place for some cheater fabric but I'm not sure if they have much in the way of panels. Good luck with your search.