Quilting on a budget

I love this scene in Bridesmaids. (If you haven't seen this movie, ya should!) Whenever I click lustfully around the fabric shops online I hear myself saying "Help me, I'm poor!" LOL! I'm not really poor. But if I'm not careful, this quilting hobby can get to be very expensive!

Let's think about this for a second! (Ew math! Ahh..) A 60"x60" quilt might use..

• 3 yards of fabric on the top @ $10.00/yard for designer beautiousness
• batting @ ... maybe $10 bucks if you're like me and just use warm n white with a Jo-Ann's coupon
• 3 yards of fabric on the back @ ??? Maybe you go cheaper on the back, let's just go with $5.00/ yard
• 1/2 yard for the binding... I'll go with $5.00/yard again
• thread...

That's $60. And yeah, this is just based on my experience and of course the numbers are different for every quilt. But it's pretty easy to spend big moolah on one single quilt. If you want to make a few quilts a month you are almost making a car payment. Okay I'll stop being annoying now. :)

This is what's been going through my mind when thinking about what my next quilt should be. I've recently bought some really pretty fabric that I can't decide what to do with. I can't cut into this stuff until I'm really, really sure I won't change my mind! But I'm still itching to quilt, and I don't have a huge fabric stash, so for now I've been working on cutting up the rest of the quilt top I showed you guys the other day that I bought for just a few dollars at an antique store. I bought it so long ago it's like quilting for free. :)

I've sorted the fabric into colors and found that there is a lot of red, and a lot of blue.

I really like the way the reds and blues look together, and since summer is quickly approaching my plan is to start a scrappy "picnic" quilt, you know, for BBQ's, naps, and of course, fourth of July fireworks! :) haha That sounds so nerdy.

Anyway, I think I'll cut each one into two rectangular pieces and chain them all together, then sew them into random rectangles sizes and then sew that up with some blocks of white. (Phew!) I really want to make it completely random and very modern. And cool.

I also ended up with a lot of browns. I'm going to save these colors and use them for inspiration in the fall.

This print made me think about a certain set of prints that I want, I really, really want...

Seriously, who doesn't already have flea market fancy or want it? Sigh... so pretty! I think the brown print above looks like it could be part of the fall bundle.

Some other prints I cut out of the the top...

And last but not least, the pile of rejects - yuck. Maybe I can use these somehow, but I'm really not sure. I'll save them just in case. :)

So anyhow, how do you guys afford the habit?