LOL!!! Wait until you hear THIS one! Talk about spending MONEY on a quilt!
I am in the process of making FOUR Asian quilts. One for each of my two sisters, one for my friend, and one for me. We went to Asia together last March and in each of the nine or ten ports we stopped, I bought silk (or cotton) to put into the quilts. The good silks cost me between $18 and $22 a meter...(roughly 39 inches a meter) and the least expensive cotton cost roughly $6 a meter. Now that I am home....I finished the first one for my friend. She is a long time quilter so NO ONE has EVER made her a quilt. She was speechless! She kept "petting" ME AND the quilt! I needed interfacing, the silks, and all of the usual threads etc. but DO I INCLUDE THE COST OF THE TRIP AS WELL??????????(See? I told you you would laugh at this one!)
As long as I LOVE doing quilting, I will not add up the cost. I do not want to be practical at all in my "retirement" hobby! I only make quilts for people who are special to me and for whom I have found a fabric that reminds me of them. I do not do "by order" and I do not sell my heartfelt work. This is my new love and it is worth every penny! (I have the other three sorted out but I did tell my sisters it would take about eighteen months before they got theirs. I need to alternate some easier ones so I don't get worn out.) Right now I am doing a memory quilt for my daughter, each fabric represents some element of her life. It is a log cabin, and I purchased almost 90 different half yards of fabric for it! I couldn't even begin to figure out what it will wind up costing as the fabrics will show up in many other quilts to come. When I see the smiles on the receiver's face, it's worth it all!