I make quilts cheaply using second hand materials, including our old worn out clothing and bedding. I will buy secondhand blankets from charity shops which I save up to use as quilt batting/wadding. A quilt can be as simple as a woven blanket sandwiched between two flat sheets. They can be made with a sewing machine or entirely by hand (I have done both).
Eleanor Burns has a youtube channel called Quilt in a Day which has a lot of her old PBS episodes of the same name.
Here's a fancy one I did almost completely by hand. The white background fabric came from an old stained tablecloth, cut strategically--and the flowers and leaves were just odds and ends of old clothes from my rag bag. My other quilts are much plainer than this!