Be free with your time because it can nourish your quilting spirit: attend quilt shows and be inspired rather than intimidated; join a guild and participate; encourage other quilters.

Watch for sales! Check out the clearance bins and remnants. You can get some really great bargains on quality fabric, if you'll just keep your eyes open. When bargain shopping (without a particular quilt in mind), keep an eye out for blenders and neutrals. Never underestimate the "power" of a 1-yard cut, if it's a good bargain. :)

thanks for the words of wisdom!

My favorite of making your suggestions is to make a sample block. So many times I have started to make one block and find out it just doesn't work for me and switch gears on the second block.

Listen to the opinions/advice of others, then decide what works best for you and proceed on your own path.

All good suggestions here - If I make a mistake I pick the threads and get the piece ready to restitch. It is much easier to start again if you're ready to sew instead of facing an issue.

An example of foolish frugality -

A neighbor lady was making a baby quilt. What she used for batting - against my advice - was a very old, very skewed, wonky, would not lay flat no how - blanket. Several years later, she did admit that using that blanket was a bad idea!

The really weird thing about her insisting on using that was that this person COULD afford to buy decent batting. She probably even had some around the house, because she did a lot of crafts.

There is nothing wrong with using recycled blankets, mattress pads, flannel sheets, etc. for the middle of a quilt.
But when the blanket was just plain out of whack - that was foolish because it was impossible to get the outer layers to lay flat.

Great advice!

I am a fairly new quilter, I've only made 3. Some of these suggestions or tips I've never heard. Thank you for starting a thread with these tips! I'm printing them for my notebook I've started to remind me. Although I've read a lot and have learned much any help that is given is greatly appreciated! Again thank you!

Use poor quality products and make a poor quality quilt. Use poor quality tools and get frustrated. Quilting is not a cheap hobby unless you are making a quilt to stay warm out of whatever the way quilting began. Keep an open mind about new quilting techniques and tools. What I have seen from many poster here is the instant poohing of a new tool without ever having used it because they think it's unnecessary but mostly because they think it cost too much.