A good sewing machine costs anywhere between $200-$700

A quilt in materials alone generally costs about $100. 

When did sewing become so EXPENSIVE?

What if you’re just a person interested in trying out quilting but don’t know if its for you? 

You certainly aren’t interested in shelling out $200 for an experiment to find out…

There’s got to be a different way. 

And I’m here to say I promise, there is! 

There are plenty of great budget saving hacks that will allow you to get started quilting without feeling like you were robbed along the way. 

So whether you don’t have the money, or just plain don’t want to sink money into a hobby you haven’t tried yet, check out these great ways to get the supplies you need to get started quilting without breaking the bank. 

Check Craigslist

Oh the sewing machine. 

Can barely sew with it (if you’re anything like me), and definitely can’t quilt without it. 

Somehow they’ve just gotten so fancy with lots of bells and whistles and now come with a comparable price tag.

But when you are just trying it out, you likely don’t want, and definitely don’t need, all that. 

Go on Craigslist for great deals on used sewing machines, they may not have the bells and whistles, but for your first few quilts, you won’t need them anyway.

You can find perfectly fine sewing machines lower than $50 to start quilting this weekend.

In the end all you need is for the sewing machine to go forward and backward and to sew a straight line so as long as it does that, you’re in business!

And later, if you decide the hobby is for you, and you are ready to invest in a new one, you’ll know exactly which features you really want in a sewing machine because you’ll know what you like and don’t like about your second hand one.

Use primarily white fabric

Solid fabrics are typically cheaper than patterned, and white solid fabric is typically the cheapest!

Related:
A Modern Cathedral Window Quilt

The nice part is that you don’t necessarily need to go the most amazing quality cotton when you go for white. 

When you go for poor quality fabrics and colors are involved you are way more likely to have issues with colors bleeding, weird shrinkage, etc.

But white will never bleed, so by going for the high quality cotton precuts that we talked about earlier, and a run of the mill white fabric from a box store, you are in the market for a super cute quilt for not a lot of money.

Find supplies at garage sales

When you start going to garage sales or estate sales, fabric, and quilting supplies will often come up.

I once went to a garage sale and found about 10 years of quilting magazines that the person had collected, all containing beautiful (and free) quilt patterns! 

Another had stacks of fabric, the woman had either grown away from the hobby or simply never used the fabrics, and was getting rid of yards and yards of fabric for about a quarter each!

Garage and estate sales are great ways for find the supplies you need to get started quilting, you just gotta get out there this weekend and snatch it up before someone else finds it. 

Things like rotary cutter blades and sewing needles can always be changed out for new ones if you pick up supplies that are less than sharp.

And don’t forget, you can always upgrade your supplies later if you decide you are a quilting lifer. 

But if you are just starting off and want to avoid spending potentially hundreds of dollars in fear that you may not even like it, head out to start quilting this weekend by giving someone else’s old supplies a new life.

Thrift Stores have CHEAP fabric!

Goodwill literally has everything.

While it’s primarily clothing, most locations actually have a home section too filled with all sorts of stuff. 

When quilters decide to leave, downsize, or even upgrade, they are likely interested in getting rid of older or unused supplies. 

Where’s the best place to donate those types of totally-still-usable-just-not-by-you items?

Goodwill. 

Even if you don’t need supplies and have all that type of stuff already. 

Where can you find lots of fabric cheap?

Perhaps that second hand store where you can reuse a seriously ugly shirt who’s fabric was actually pretty cute. 

You can go all over the internet and find people who take goodwill ugly or outdated garments and alter them into super cute modern day garments. 

The fabric is perfect fine, its just the original cut is bad. 

So why not repurpose great fabric used in awful ways, and disassemble a shirt to get super cheap fabric for your next quilt?

Precuts get you more variety for less

What are precuts? 

Precuts are collections of fabrics already put together and cut ahead of time to a couple of regular dimensions. 

As the pack will generally contain many different fabrics, buying a pack will allow you to play with many fun fabrics for way less than it would cost to buy each one individually. 

Precuts will also allow you to buy lower quantities of each fabric as they are all bundled together, which is definitely better if you are living in a college dorm, small apartment, or just have better things to store than fabric. 

So by going with precuts, you can get the super cute fabrics you want without paying crazy amounts for them, and then having tons of it leftover afterward.

I typically have a hard time finding precuts packs in stores near me, if you are too, check out my favorite online fabric store that specializes in precuts here.

Use bed sheets for backing

Most bolts of fabric will be anywhere between $5 and $25 a yard. 

So when you go to the fabric store and know you need about 5 yards of a single fabric just for the back, you are bound to cringe a little.

There’s a fantastic hack to this though, and its probably already in your house. 

Use a bed sheet as your backing!

Bed sheets can be significantly cheaper given the amount of fabric you will likely need.

They come in all different sizes to guarantee that you’ll find one already bigger than your finished quilt size.

AND you won’t even need to piece it together.

What’s better than that?

Even if you want to order a specific patterned one and have to pay for shipping, you are still likely much less than what those five yards of fabric would have cost off the bolt. 

You can even play around with using flannel sheets to back your quilts in. That’ll be cozy in December 🙂

Save your Batting and sew pieces together 

The first time I heard this tip I was stunned at how simple it is and how silly I was for not realizing it myself.

How many times have I just tossed out scraps of batting from the margins around the edge of quilts?

I could be saving those 6 inch wide scraps and sewing them together to save money on batting for my next project!

Once again, buying in bulk on batting is way more efficient financially long term, but if you are just starting out who’s going to buy a full bolt of batting?

I’m a handful of years in, and STILL don’t buy full bolts of batting…

Just save your edges from the store bought stuff and use a zig zag stitch to Humpty Dumpty it back together.

ProTip: always buy the same type and brand that way when you create a pieced batting, the different sections will all quilt, shrink, and wear the same.  

No one will ever be able to tell it wasn’t a full piece originally!

Just like you will likely keep left over scraps of fabric, keep left over scraps of batting too. 

Even if you only ever make one quilt with pieced batting, that alone will save you easily $20!

So if you’re are still thinking its too expensive to get started…

Just because you COULD spend crazy amounts of money on the latest and greatest quilting supplies and fabrics, doesn’t mean you have to in order to make a great quilt!

If you are in college, on a tight budget, or just don’t want to invest into a hobby you aren’t quite sure of yet, there are plenty of ways to dip your toes in and be good to your wallet at the same time. 

I think of it this way. 

Quilting doesn’t take money, it simply requires being creative, in more than one way is all. 

So get out there and get your quilting on and thanks for hanging out to hear all my great quilting hacks.

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