Quilting

Since I bought the fabric to make my quilt, I needed a couple of things to get it started. So off I went to JoAnn's. Let's see, my aunt said to get a mat to cut on, a rotary cutter, thread, needles, a ruler, if I have any questions someone there can help me, right? Oh they can help alright! Now, I have to say the rotary cutter is a wonderful thing. Way better than trying to use scissors. And I can certainly understand you need a mat to cut on with it. But wow, I had no idea how expensive they are. I opted for the middle sized mat since the big one was $45.00. There was a woman in the aisle getting one too, she said she had the smaller one and it wasn't big enough for her. Hmmm....we'll see, after all it's only a throw, not a bedspread. After I had my bare neccessities in my cart I spied a beginning quilters book. I'm sure God directed my vision to that. The total for that little jaunt came to $90.00. I will have to keep this up to get my money's worth out of all this stuff. Let's see, I spent $45.00 on fabric plus the "stuff " and I will still need the fabric for the back of the quilt plus the batting for the middle. I should be able to make the thing for a mere $200.00! I saw a quilt in a shop that someone had made and was selling for $600.00. It was a queen size. At the time, I thought "Are they nuts?" Oh, no, they are just trying to recoup their losses and probably pay for the new sewing machine they upgraded to and maybe make the payment on the quilting machine they couldn't live without. Oh yea, I forgot to add in the cost of having mine quilted. Good news there, my aunt said to send it to her when I get it done and she will quilt it for me for free! She has the super duper, so big it has a house of it's own, lazer guided quilting machine. Oh boy! When I was a girl, no one bought fabric for a quilt. We made them from the scraps left over from the clothes we made. I have a quilt my grandmother made and it is fun to look at it and remember who had what dress made out of which fabric, it is a memory quilt. And I also have one my great grandmother made. Every stitch in the quilt, and I mean every one, was done by hand. Imagine the time it must have taken to do that. I remember my grandmother had a room with this big quilting frame set up in it and chairs all around so people could sit and visit while they worked on a quilt. We had some fun times together doing that. Of course, we only had 2 TV stations to watch at that time so there was more time for things like this. I guess we could save money if we all slowed down a bit.