pieces

Better quality fabric will produce a better quilt. Cheaper fabric will stretch and ravel more. And the quilt will wear out sooner. After all the work put into making a quilt you want it too last.
I am on a fixed income and buy my fabric at a local quilt shop. But can't afford everyday prices. She has 2 sales a year, I buy my fabric during these sales. This way I get a good quaility fabric, but at reasonable prices I can afford. Cheap fabric will not produce a good quality quilt. You will not be pleased with the end result. In my opinion its bettter to buy less yardage of better quaility fabric than a lot of cheap fabric. Check with your local quilt shops and see when they have their sales. Check out the difference in the cheap/quilt shop quality. A lot of difference.

Boston1954

I will go as high as $9.00 a yard..........if........

I absolutely LOVE IT

AND

it is good quality. I used to buy from anyplace not caring about the long term. I made a quilt for my Rottweiler, and after it had been washed just a few times (about 6) some of the cheaper fabrics started to pull away from the rest. I would rather get the good stuff.

AliKat

When I need the feeling of a job well done ... to keep me going ... I use the more expensive fabric. My LQS's have coupons and I use them as much as I can afford to.

I found when I didn't use quality goods the finished product wasn't what I hoped for. It was discouraging.

However, for my charity quilting ... I use what is at hand and will use the Joanns fabrics for those.

gramquilter2

I also agree after you buy fabric from a Quilt Shop, you will soon FEEL the difference between it and Walmart fabric and your quilts will look like quality rather than quntity.

quilts again

Wal-Mart often does have some nice quality fabrics. They seem to be overstock of older patterns no longer carried in quilt stores. There's not much variety but W-M is a good place to look for backings.

Ramona Byrd

No, not unrealistic at all. Just careful. BUT....
I find a lot of strange materials at estate sales and church sales,
but not as much in the usual yard sales. Some materials don't seem
to be made much nowadays, and in some cases that is good. But a
long amount of years ago I saw some $25 dollar a yard material at
the Stanford Shopping Center in CA, that I yearned for and talked
about till my husband told me to get it for my birthday. Of course,
by then it was gone and so was that material shop. I've never seen
it any other place since then. I haven't remembered a lot of the stuff
that I've bought over the years, but I remember in sharp relief what
I yearned for and did not get. Just a yard of that material I could have
used, but did not because in the 1980s that was way too much for
"just fabric".

Spice

LQS are the best place. They all seem to have a sale corner or shelf. Some of the stores that seem to have the exact same fabric are not really the exact same fabric. I have found some with the same prints, but the cheaper ones do not have the same amount of color in them. When they a printing the fabrics they do several colors and sometimes they miss some and the colors are not as rich.

mom-6

Another place to check is a fabric outlet. I know in Dallas there is an awesome place called Golden d'Or (also a fabric wholesaler) that has fabrics of all sorts from super expensive (over $50/yd) to remnants at $1/yd. You can get on their e-mail list and get coupons for regular price fabric as well as notification of their clearance sales which have HUGE savings. Once again you have to be careful on the stuff on the remnant tables and the "back room" because some of it is damaged/flawed or otherwise not up to standard. At least some of our local Wallyworld fabrics have Golden d'Or on the label on the bolt, so I'm thinking the fabric buyer must have hit the same clearance sale I did!

polly13

The fabric at the quality quilt shops will retain the color that attracted you for a longer period than the poorer quality fabrics. You may not notice a difference when they are on the bolt, but I trust the quilt shop owner to offer the best quality fabirc for its price. Watch for their sales.

Connie in Indiana

Will I am a country woman an try things then don't like it.
to just see if your going to like it or think this isn't for me like I have done more times in my life then not! Think thrift stores an good will, you know I have got some really good fabric there for little nothing.And then summer is soon coming an so if yard sales.My friends even got to watching the yards for me. I don't got buy fabric unless I have to make one just in the colors I looking for! Hope this will help!