Start your quilting business but do not give up any paid employment you can get. When you have 6 months worth of quilt orders backed up, THEN you can quit your day job.[/QUOTE]

Great advice. Also, you'll want to make sure that you want to do quilting as a business and won't get burned out. I admire you for wanting to make a career; I did one quilt on consignment a few years ago and made a promise to myself that I would NEVER EVER do that again. I felt so pressured that I just kept making mistake after mistake.

You night have better luck with small items and doing craft tables at swap meets, and school boutiques, lower priced items sell better and especially if you do seasonal stuff just before the holidays. People just aren't willing to pay that price for quilts that would make them worth selling.

I would love to get into the quilting business also and teach quilting. I am a former teacher of elementary and would love to make that switch, so this thread was interesting to me. Good Luck

I very much agree with you. Extra ideas I can quickly thinkof are costs of advertising, marketing and petrol, If you sell at a market or gallery you have commissions and insurance as well as table, chair and display units. Others will add to these, I'm sure.

If I were you I would begin with making tablerunners, placemats, wall-warmers and since you are keeping your part-time job maybe there might be a good selling field for you. To "invest" into the world of handmade quilts is very precarious, especially now in our present financial cliff........It seems to me that most handmade items are really hard to sell in large enough quantities to make a living at. If we were not quilters on this board, what would be covering our beds??????Probably the store-bought "made in China" ones.

Maybe teach???

As others have indicated, pricing depends so much on the area. I'm in rural South Central Texas where quilt prices are relatively low. After I bought my longarm, I did a higher end (jurored) Christmas show for about 5 years---just for fun. The show is in its 27th year, is well advertised, and is well attended, not just by locals, but from miles around. Some years were good; some years not so good. The advantage was that my name got out there, and I began picking up custom orders, as well as longarm business. It was a slow process, but now I stay busy enough that I no longer have time to 'fill the booth' during the year, so I gave up doing the show. If you'd like more info on pricing, or if you have other questions, send me a PM. I'll be glad to share info, but in the meantime, I join others in advising you that this is NOT a dependable source of income UNTIL you build a clientele.

Quilt shops are always begging for good teachers. Make a list of what you would like to teach and write a quick description of the class , how many sessions, costs, etc. Talk to the shops. Ask them what classes they would like taught. Talk to other teachers to get a feel for what they charge, what the shops charge, contracts, etc. it is a business so you will want to cover all of the bases beyond just the curriculum. There are books n Amazon.com that help with staring a sewing/ quilting business and what it entails. Take some quilt classes at various shops to get a feel for how the instructors conduct their classes...make notes on what was good, what needed improvement,etc.

You are already a teacher. I would think that you should have an easier time transitioning into a new subject matter.

Teaching beginning quilting classes is a win win. The industry and shops love to attract new quilters to the craft.

Another idea is to look into being a sewing educator for machines. Of course, you will need to be familiar with a particular brand and their models. Maybe inquire about this by contacting the manufacturer.

Sandy

First of all....a big HUG! I feel your pain, really I do. My DH has been on unemployment since June and now we are told that will end with the rest of America's on Dec 29. Yeah, Merry Christmas. I do longarm quilting from my home...and also make quilts if they want me to. I can tell you, a mouse could not survive on what I make. Especially making an entire quilt. It takes a week of hard labor to make a whole quilt and then you would only get maybe $500. if you are very lucky! The thing is...there are months when there is NO business. I mean none. My business flows like this....4 quilts come in, in one week....then none for two months. It is crazy, but if I had to depend on this to eat, I would starve. I think you better keep your part time job and keep looking for full time. Sorry to have such bad news.

The only suggestion I have is look at the website, www.Quiltsforsale . It is a well designed site for selling quilts. She charges a minimal fee to design your own web page.