I hear ya, Marianne! It also bothers me that beginners are not taught the basics of piecing...starting with drafting their own patterns, making templates to mark intersections, drawing seam lines and sewing it all together with a needle and thread!!
Alex has said on several occasions that "Quilting is not an inexpensive sport", but at the very foundation of it....it can be!

On the other hand...for those who have the where-with-all to buy gadgets, I say have fun! There are lots of cool tools out there, and I certainly have my share, but I also know that I could be on a desert island with needle, thread, fabric and a thimble, and I could make a quilt!

I don't want to sound grumpy - OK I am grumpy - but am I the only one who is ever so slightly fed up with gadgets overload and peddling of notions, potions and lotions in everything patchwork and quilt related today?
I went to my local quilt group last night and chatted to a young lady, new to sewing. I brought my 30+ year old sewing machine along and set it up for piecing, eye-balling where to put my stack of post-it notes, sewed 2 squares together, measured and then got on to piecing a block. The lady was big-eyed and asked why I did not use a seam allowance tool and a magnetic seam guide like she had been sold at a recent class for IMHO a lot of money - 3 m of fabrics worth to be more precise. My 15+ year old rulers with sand paper dots underneath was not up to scratch either - no I needed a new non-slip ruler (I didn't enlighten her that I had to buy a die cutter recently because I can no longer use ruler and cutter) with its accompanying cutter and doing HST I needed either paper on a roll or a ruler for squaring them up so they were just right or my blocks would be miserably mis-sized, mis-aligned and generally not worthy of being used. I asked her what she had been making at this class and her reply was Friendship Star blocks only she had not done any really except for one block to try the technique because she had not had enough money to buy the right fabric by the time she had got all the rest of the paraphernalia and the fabric she had brought with her had been deemed unsuitable for the project being some fabric she had won at one of our recent group meetings door price.
How on earth did they manage to make quilts before the 1/4" foot was invented?
Sorry to waste your time I just needed to vent my frustration
Marianne