For many quilting and fabric art projects, we don’t need the most expensive fabric.  Odds and ends from various souces will suffice.  Also,  you may find some very nice fabric as you accumulate it from your non-traditional sources.
At Quilted Paradise, I found an article about Fabric Finds for the Frugal Quilter which contains some very good ideas for acquiring fabric for your projects.  Mentioned here:
Bandanas
Neckties
Thrift Stores
Garage Sales
Yard, garage and church sales
My daughter and I’ve found many fun fabrics and embellishments  from these sources over the years.  Let your creativity soar and you’ll discover many interesting ways to use items found this …read more

My daughter Beth and I had fun this morning searching through the scrap baskets at the local quilt shop.  Beth needed some thread for her current fabric art project.  So, of course, we browsed the shop and chatted with other quilters who were out on this bitter cold, near zero day in New Hampshire.
“Not even the cold can keep quilters from haunting their favorite fabric shop,” I mused as we browsed.
Then Beth and I discovered the shop owner adding fabric pieces to the scrap basket.  These were of various sizes, colors, patterns, and textures. 
“Some quilters who came in earlier nearly …read more

The pioneer quiltmakers created most of their quilts from scraps, pieces of fabric left from other sewing projects or outgrown clothing that still had some sturdy material.  Generally they didn’t purchase lengths of fabric solely for the purpose of quiltmaking.  Even the backs of some of the quilts were made from larger pieces of fabric stitched together.
The quilt I made with my grandmother consisted of scraps, not any consistent fabric throughout.  The blocks were arranged in 4-patch design, but there weren’t many of the same fabrics.  Some of these were cut from patterned feed sacks which previously had held grain …read more