Frugal Friday

My tip is to bring back the pioneer art of making quilts from scraps. I made my son a quilt using his old bluejeans and plaid boxers. I also made the quilt to your left using scraps. A great website for making use of scraps is http://www.quiltville.com/. You can easily make 2 quilt tops at the same time by using her "leaders and enders" method. It saves thread and time and makes use of all those scraps. You just need to spend some time cutting and organizing the fabric into strips of certain widths and lengths and have them on hand when you are making your main quilt top. I made the baby scrap quilt to your left using this system with hardly any effort. The name of the pattern is "String X". I didn't use a foundation fabric though. I just sewed scraps together until it was a little bigger than the final section needed to be and then using a rotary cutter cut it to the correct size.

Another quilt money savings tip could be use an old blanket or sheet as the batting (or middle layer of the quilt) . I read this tip and other quilt savings tips in the Tightwad Gazette (not sure which edition?) My grandmother who quilted from about 1920 to the1970s used actual cotton from the cotton fields here in rural North Carolina. She had a gadget that got the seeds out of it. Of course she also used flour sacks. I have one of her quilt tops that I plan to quilt some day. If our pioneer ancestors could make do, we can surely find alternate ways to make frugal quilts.

You could also piece the back using scraps. There are many examples of this on the website.

My favorite quilts are scrap quilts. The fabric doesn't even have to be pretty.

Let your friends know that you could use any scrap fabric they want to get rid of. I have received several bags of fabric scraps this way. I also keep old shirts and other articles of clothing that would make good quilt blocks. Sometimes you can get fabric scraps on EBay at reasonable prices.

The possibilities are endless. Using a loved one's old clothes makes a lovely memory quilt.

For more frugal ideas visit http://www.biblicalwomanhood.com/blog.htm

Debbie J.