Why quilt shop cotton is not craft store cotton
The bolts at a chain craft store and the bolts at a real quilt shop can look identical from across the room, and they are not the same product. Quilt shop cotton from Moda, Robert Kaufman, Riley Blake, Andover, or Windham (converters who specify the greige goods and the printing rather than mills themselves) is a tighter weave printed on grain, with better dye penetration, less shrinkage, and less bleeding when you finally wash the finished quilt. The cheap stuff is looser, often printed skewed to the grain, and it shows up after the first wash as puckered seams and a pink halo around every red patch. You pay for the difference: current quilt shop prices for a good print run somewhere in the low to mid teens per yard depending on the shop and the line, with batiks and some designer lines a few dollars higher; online discounters and house brands undercut that, which is part of the trade-off. The other thing a specialist stocks that a big-box does not is depth in solids. A shop that carries a full wall of Kona Cotton from Robert Kaufman, or a deep run of Moda Bella Solids, lets you match a print collection to exact background and binding colors instead of settling for the six whites the chain store happened to order. Look for the Kona color card hanging near the cutting counter; it is a small tell that the shop takes solids seriously. Also check the selvage edge of any bolt you are unsure about. The manufacturer, the collection name, and the color dots are printed there, and a shop that carries recognizable lines is a shop that buys from the same distributors the pattern designers do.
Precuts are a convenience, not a bargain, and that is fine
Precuts took off because Moda popularized selling a coordinated stack of one collection in ready-to-sew sizes, and every other manufacturer followed; Moda trademarked names like Jelly Roll and Layer Cake, so other lines sell the same cuts under their own names. The standard sizes are worth memorizing: a jelly roll is forty strips (some makers pack forty-two) at two and a half inches by the width of the fabric, a layer cake is forty-two ten inch squares, a charm pack is forty-two five inch squares, a mini charm is the same in two and a half inch squares, and a fat quarter is a half yard cut in half the other way so you get roughly eighteen by twenty-one inches instead of a nine inch strip. Per square inch, precuts usually cost a little more than the same yardage, and you are also accepting the pinked or raw edges and the fact that you cannot prewash them without turning the stack into fringe. What you get in exchange is a whole collection, including the prints you would not have picked on your own, which is usually what makes a scrappy quilt look designed instead of random. The good quilt shops stack precuts by manufacturer and collection, keep them current, and do not let a jelly roll sit on the shelf so long that the outer strip fades. They will also cut their own fat quarters and fat eighths from the bolt, which is how you build a stash of a particular line without buying a full yard of every print. If a shop's precut display is a dusty basket of orphan charm packs from three seasons ago, that tells you something about turnover.
Batting and thread are where the finished quilt is decided
Beginners agonize over fabric and then grab whatever batting is on sale, which is backwards. Cotton batting like Warm and Natural or Quilters Dream Cotton is the default for a reason: it is flat, it drapes, it stays put while you baste, and it shrinks a few percent on the first wash to produce that crinkled, lived-in look most quilters want. Polyester is lighter, loftier, and does not shrink, so it is the pick when you want a quilt that stays crisp and puffy or one that will be washed constantly, though cheap poly will beard through a dark top. Cotton-poly blends like Hobbs Heirloom 80/20 split the difference and are what a lot of longarmers load by default. Wool batting from Hobbs Tuscany or Quilters Dream Wool is the expensive option that makes quilting stitches pop with real dimension, and it is far lighter and warmer than the loft suggests. Bamboo and bamboo-cotton blends are soft and drape beautifully but cost more and are harder to find, which is exactly the sort of thing a specialist shop stocks and a chain does not. For thread, the shops worth ranking carry Aurifil 50 weight cotton on the orange spool in a serious range of colors, because a fine two-ply cotton builds less bulk in seam allowances than the heavier all-purpose thread most people learn on. Superior, Mettler, and Gutermann cotton are respectable alternatives, and a shop with a wall of 40 weight polyester like Glide is telling you it services longarm quilters.
Longarm services, edge-to-edge versus custom, and what the quote should include
Most quilters never finish their own quilting past lap size, and the shop that either owns a longarm or has a longarmer on staff is the one that gets your tops out of the closet. Edge-to-edge quilting, also called pantograph or all-over quilting, runs a single repeating design across the whole quilt regardless of piecing, and it is priced by the square inch, typically somewhere around two to four cents per square inch depending on the density of the design and the market, with a minimum charge, and batting and thread usually billed on top, sometimes with a surcharge for specialty thread. Custom quilting, where the quilter stitches in the ditch, treats each block differently, and fills backgrounds with dense work, costs two to four times more and sometimes well beyond that, and is quoted by the hour or by a much higher square inch rate after the quilter has seen the top. When you ask for a quote, expect to be asked about backing and batting: most longarmers want the backing at least four inches larger than the top on every side, with the selvages trimmed off and any seams pressed open, and many prefer horizontal seams, parallel to the rollers, so a seam does not build up on itself as the quilt advances. Most will also sell you batting off a wide roll by the inch, which is cheaper and better matched than a packaged bag. Turnaround runs from a couple of weeks in a slow season to a couple of months before the holidays. A growing number of shops also rent longarm time on a Gammill, APQS, Handi Quilter, or Innova after you take a certification class, which is the cheapest path to quilting your own large tops and a strong signal that the shop is serious about the craft rather than just the fabric.
How to read a quilt shop in five minutes
Walk in and look at the walls before you look at the bolts. Sample quilts tell you what the shop actually sews and what it can kit for you, and a wall of current samples in the lines on the floor means the staff make things rather than just sell them. Then look at whose fabric is on the shelves. Moda and Ruby Star Society, Robert Kaufman, Riley Blake, Andover, Windham, and Free Spirit with the Kaffe Fassett Collective are the backbone of a traditional to modern shop; Art Gallery Fabrics, with its smoother pima hand, signals a shop leaning modern; a deep wall of Hoffman batiks and Northcott prints leans traditional. None of these is better, but the mix tells you whether the shop matches how you quilt. Check the notions wall for Creative Grids rulers with the gripper backing, a fresh stock of Olfa 45 millimeter blades, Schmetz needles in more than one size, and starch alternatives like Best Press; a thin notions wall means you will be driving to the chain store for the basics anyway. Ask about the block-of-the-month program and whether the shop is in a regional shop hop, because those two programs are how a shop keeps regulars coming in and how you meet the people who will answer your questions later. Finally, ask a cutting counter question you already know the answer to. If the staff can explain why a scant quarter inch seam matters, you have found a real quilt shop.