How to save money on QUILTING for new Quilters

How to save money on QUILTING for new Quilters

Join your local Quilting Guild. You will find lots of support and information there. Don’t be shy about being a beginner; we all were at one time.
When you’re starting out resist the temptation to buy every tool, gadget and book on the market. The basics will be enough to get you started and keep you going for a long time. See my list of “Basic” quilting tools.

3. Check out your local Library – borrow books before you buy them. I love new quilting books, but much as I would like to I just can’t have them all. The library is a great way to stretch your budget. My library has quilting magazines and lots of the latest books.

4. Buy Used and discounted books and magazines. For books try half.com, Amazon, Mackenzie books and Ed Hamilton books. For magazines, E-bay, Craig’s list and Quilter’s Flea Market are my favorites.

5. Save batting scraps and cut them up to use as pillow stuffing. I
use some of my ugly fabric and make a pillow form, leaving one side open. I fill it as I go so I don’t have a big pile of batting to cut up all at once.

6 . Buy your piecing thread by the cone. I use a thin, lint free thread in a neutral color for piecing. Lots of benefits to this, first, the cost, you’d have to buy about 11 spools of thread to equal 1 cone of Bottom Line or Sew Fine, my current favorite piecing thread. I figure I save $10 to $15 on thread buying the cones. These threads make much less lint, which will save wear and tear on your machine Also fewer spools of thread makes for less clutter.

7. Find patterns online for FREE! See my list of favorite pattern and BOM sites. (coming soon)

8. Don’t know how to do something? Go online for free tutorials, but you knew that already didn’t you?

9. Buy your backing fabrics from the clearance bins of your favorite quilt shops. I always look at the discounted fabrics and when I find something I like I buy enough for a backing. Do you really need to spend $8.00 a yard for the backing? My local shop sells their older fabrics for $2 -$3 a yard and they have a good selection.

10. Shop for fabric online. Here area couple of my favorite discount shopping sites:

Quilter's Flea Market and Hancocks of Paducah.

Saving money on your quilting hobby is just like saving money on anything else. Buy only what you need, don't waste your "leftovers" , buy quality because it lasts and makes your job easier.

How to save money on QUILTING for long time quilters

Saving money on quilting boils down to three things, use what you have, buy only what you need and pinch your pennies when you do buy. Here’s a list of ways to do just that.

1. Use your scraps. For ideas on how to organize your scraps read this post by Bonnie Hunter.
http://quiltville.com/scrapusersystem.shtml

2. Use those ugly and “what was I thinking of” fabrics for backings.


3. Make a challenging quilt. It will take longer to make the quilt so you fabrics will last longer and you will have fun learning something new and stretching yourself.


4. Don’t buy a new magazine until you’ve used a pattern from an old one.


5. Don’t buy a new pattern until you’ve used one you already have.


6. Join a quilting guild if you haven’t already, you’ll have lots of quilting fun for very little money.

7. If your quilting guild has an auction,donate, attend and bid. The members of my quilting guild donate their unwanted items and most of them are sold for under retail. If your guild doesn’t have an auction, suggest having one. It’s a great fund-raiser and lots of fun.

8. Check out Quilter’s Flea Market, it’s a great place to sell unwanted quilting items and buy some new-to-you things for a less than new price. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/QuiltersFleaMarket/


9. Shop your stash - see Stashbusters online group for lots of great ideas to use your stash.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stashbuster/


10. Finish your UFO’s and WIP’s. Unfinished projects are a BIG money waster. Remember, it’s not a quilt until it’s quilted!



Please leave a comment with your favorite way(s) to stretch your quilting dollars, we all will appreciate it.

MONEY & QUILTING

Quilting has become an expensive hobby. If you make a large quilt you are probably going to use 15-20 yards of fabric, a batting, thread and needles. Then there are the non-consumable supplies that you need to have, the rotary cutter and mat, pins, books and patterns.
I’ve been quilting for a long time so I have lots of tools, some of which I’ve never used…ouch, and LOTS of fabric. I have a huge stash of quilting fabrics and I’m glad I have them now because as gas and food prices rise my budget for non-necessities is shrinking.

I recently read a blog post on how to save money quilting written by a non-quilter. While I agree with some of her ideas I don’t agree with all of them, and I think that her list is more relevant to the new quilter than the person who’s been quilting for a long time. If you’d like to read it this is the link:

http://www.quiltingandpatchwork.com/2008/06/20/10-ways-to-save-money-quilting/

The things I, as an established quilter do to save money on quilting will be different than the person just starting out.

So I’m going to write a couple of posts on money saving ideas for quilters. The first will be for those of us who have a “stash”, the second will be for the new quilter.
If you have any money saving ideas please post a comment and share your idea with the rest of us. I think we’ll all have to learn to be more frugal if we are going to be able to continue to pursue our hobbies as the price of gas continues to rise and takes a bite out of our budgets.