A quest for white cotton

Remember these pieces? well they were slowly becoming these star blocks...

I was too anxious for my own good, as usual, and started making these blocks with Kona white I had on hand from another project. I always use Egyptian cotton in white for my quilts, I buy it by the bolt at JoAnn's (with a 50% off coupon of course). I prefer the Egyptian because it has a tighter weave and is less transparent than the Kona, in my opinion. But after making 3 stars, which by the way are pretty time consuming, I'm not too pleased with the noticeable difference in base cloth in the Innocent Crush and Kona. So I started looking at other options...

I had only recently heard about FreeSpirits designer solids, and was curious about how they compared to the more well known Kona solids. I have very limited knowledge of solids but I use a lot of Anna Maria Horner fabrics, which come from FreeSpirit and would rather use a solid that is closer to the base cloth of it's designer. So I ordered a FreeSpirit designer solid charm pack from FatQuarterShop, who has them at 1/2 off right now, to make my own color chart. (FreeSpirit currently does not offer color charts to the public)

***FYI-If you order one of these charm packs they are apparently stacked in numerical order. So keep it bundled until you are ready to compare it to the FreeSpirit site for labeling, which has them arranged in color-order, with their numbers below each picture.***

I also finally bought a Kona color card/chart from FabricShack, they aren't listed on their website, but if you call them they are one of the few stores left that are still carrying them at a decent price, $15.00. Hopefully I'll get back to this project soon, lol.

Although I only have 5" charms to compare I think that the weave seams to be a bit tighter than that of the Kona and a bit smoother to the touch. I will say that I was very displeased to learn that the Kona prices at JoAnn's had jumped to $6.99 a yard, which in my opinion is just ridiculous. So Sunday I ordered a bolt of white in Egyptian cotton from Joann's using my 50% off coupon and they had a sign up that the Egyptian was $6.99, instead of it's regular $7.99 a yard, and they honored it! So for this project I will be sticking to the Egyptian, since I need around 15 yards of white for this quilt top, sigh.

As soon as the bolt arrives, I'll be picking apart those stars, really not looking forward to that part. =/