Moda Scrap Bag Review

Do you like surprises?

Do you like getting creative with scrap fabric?

Do you like saving money?

Then you might love a Moda Scrap Bag.

An updated version of this post including an unboxing video and a second scrap bag review appears on our sister site Upcycle My Stuff.

What is a Moda Scrap Bag?

This post contains affiliate links – please see my disclosure policy for more details.

If you haven’t heard of these before they are little bags of scrap fabrics sold by Moda.

They come in these mysterious and unassuming brown bags and inside you get a roll of fabric strips cut from the bolt ends in store.

Typically they have between 25-30 30″/76cm strips that are advertised as being 2.5″ – 3.5″ wide.

They are sold by different sellers at different prices – see below for online buying options.

Buying my Moda Scrap Bag

I got mine on Amazon UK for £14.65.

I was given an Amazon gift certificate for my birthday and along with a few other sewing supplies I decided it was the perfect time to take a punt on a Moda Scrap Bag.

Because the thing is with a Moda Scrap Bag – you don’t know exactly what fabrics you are going to get inside!

It’s a gamble!

(Note: There are some buying options where you can take away the surprise factor – see below).

I read the reviews on Amazon before I purchased.

There were a few bad ones that mentioned the amount of strips with selvedge edges as the key issue – one reviewer said she got a full bag of 30 strips with selvedge edges – yikes!

Some others just weren’t happy with the patterns or colours they received.

There were lots of good reviews too though.

The ones that encouraged me were the ones that said usually you get a pack of strips from one fabric collection – which should mean that whatever you receive will coordinate between the strips anyway.

So even if they don’t work with your other projects you could do something with just putting those strips together.

I will note the amazon gift card was from my mother-in-law so this is not a sponsored post or an ad for Moda – this is my honest opinion.

Expectations

Before I go through what I received in my Moda Scrap Bag here is what would have been a bad outcome from my point of view:

• christmas motif prints – I just don’t have that much interest in making lots of christmas projects and it kind of limits what you can do with the fabric as it’s less likely to mix well with other scraps.
• a whole bag full of selvedge edges – to be honest I don’t mind a few selvedge edges, especially if they have little colour marks or writing on them as I can use them in selvedge edge specific projects, but ideally I wouldn’t want a whole back full of them!
• anything that just isn’t my taste – okay this is a big category! Everyone has patterns, motifs or colours that they like or dislike, so clearly I didn’t want to receive anything where my first reaction was – ugh!

My Moda Scrap Bag

As it turns out I was delighted with what came in my scrap bag.

Phew!

Let me run through all the details.

Number & Width of Strips

In my Moda Scrap Bag I received 30 strips of cotton fabric that were all 32.3″/82cm long.

16 of these strips had a selvedge edge, some with print or writing some just white.

My strips ranged from 1.6″/6cm wide to 3 .1″/8cm wide of patterned fabric.

So by that I mean all of the strips were actually 7-8cm wide but as 16 of them had the selvedge edge those ones had between 1.6″/6cm – 2.7″/7cm of patterned fabric.

The Prints

So my Moda Scrap Bag was all from one fabric collection – namely Lella Boutique for Moda’s Garden Variety Collection.

I really like that all my fabrics are from one collection because it means that the colours all go together and I have choices about how I mix and match them in different projects.

Here is what I got:

There were two strips of the ‘Handpicked’ pattern – both with selvedge edges.

I got four strips of ‘Bright Side’ in different colours – only one of these had a selvedge edge.

There were five strips of ‘Queen Bee’ in different colours, two of which had a selvedge edge.

I think this is my favourite of all the patterns in my scrap bag so I was super happy to have got 5 of them.

There were 4 strips of ‘Candy Strip’ in different colours all of which had selvedge edges.

I got a whopping 12 strips of ‘Floral Garden Bed’ 6 in the multicoloured colour ways and two each of some of the one colour varieties.

Only 3 of the 12 of these had selvedge edges.

I really like these as well so I think I can come up with something really fun to do with so many of them.

Lastly I got 3 strips of ‘Bramble’ – two in Blue and one in Red, all with selvedge edges.

I like all the prints I got.

My least favourite is probably the ‘Handpicked’ pattern but cut up small in scrappy projects I think it will still look pretty good.

Cost Comparison

So how can you figure out if this was a good deal?

Well you need to be able to compare it to something don’t you?

So I went online and found Lella Boutique for Moda’s Garden Variety Collection Jelly Roll sold for £36.85 or $44.95.

This Jelly Roll has 40 2.5″ x 44″ strips.

So my Moda Scrap Bag strips were shorter – more like 32″ and some of them were wider and some thinner.

I also got 30 strips while the Jelly Roll has 40.

But…I paid £14.65 so that’s about 40% of the cost for over 70% of the contents…I think that’s pretty good!

Now this may not be the fairest comparison as part of what you are paying for with a Jelly Roll is the convenience of having someone cut your strips to an exact size for your but it was the closest comparison I could find!

Would I buy again?

The short answer to this is definitely yes.

I personally like the surprise element of the Moda Scrap Bag, and the challenge of what to make with it since I didn’t buy it with any fixed projects in mind.

Now it will probably only take one bad bag to put me off, but my experience of this one particular bag has been a good one.

I wasn’t disappointed with the number of selvedge edges as I had seen form the reviews ahead of time that this was a possibility and I love the idea of piecing together selvedge edges to make little zipper pouches and things so I don’t mind that I know have a few more for my selvedge scrap bag.

I know not everyone will feel that way about the selvedges.

I guess you have to make your own assessment of whether this would stack up as value for money for you if you were the person who got the bag with 30 strips all with a selvedge edge!

Where to Buy a Moda Scrap Bag Online

So I said at the top there were a number of buying options.

You can obviously buy these direct from Moda.

The Moda Scrap Bag is also a product that lots of resellers sell on so you can find it online in a number of other places too – some with the option to peek inside first which you don’t get on Moda’s website.

There are also different varieties – mine was the cotton strips quilting fabric scrap bag but they also do a wool one.

I bought mine on Amazon UK as I said for £14.65 at time of purchase.

You can buy them in the United States on Ebay.

And you can buy them worldwide (depending on the specific seller’s shipping policies) on Etsy.

If you want to know before you buy what collection your fabric will come from then Etsy or Ebay would be my recommendation as they seem to have a lot of sellers who detail exactly what is in their scrap bags.

One thing to note is that you might pay a little more when you know in advance exactly what you are getting.

If you decide to take a punt on a Moda Scrap Bag I hope you have as good an experience as I did!

Updated: I’ve now made a baby quilt with my Moda Scrap Bag – in fact it was my first ever quilt! You can see it here.

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