Originally Posted by Janeen
Here's a story for you about why people don't buy quilts...
A friend of mine quilts - she does beautiful work, she has a great relationship with a longarm quilter and between the two of them they turn out some fabulous stuff... impressive even...
ok, a woman at work kept asking Margie to make her two quilts for her twins - Margie kept telling her, 'no', that she did not want to get into the making of quilts for other people.. the woman kept insisting and getting downright belligerant about it. so Margie finally told her, 'ok, let me figure up a price so we both know what we're talking about....
So Margie figured up a price using good materials, batting, TIME, the long arm quilter, the backing, etc planning on doing a really good job and making 'heirloom' quilts for this woman's kids....
When she told the woman, "I came up with at least $500 for each quilt" the woman went ballistic and said - are you ready?? :-o
"But I can get a quilt at Walmart for $30!".... and Margie said, "Well, then, do that"
We stopped at Hardy Arkansas on our way home from Missouri a couple weeks ago - we've stopped in that neat little town several times and this last time quite a few shops had "handmade Ozark quilts" for sale.... but.. here's the strange part, these quilts all looked exactly alike - in each store and the "quilting" was nothing more than basting.... and these quilts were all under $150 all the way up to king size.... I didn't look for the "made in China by 6-year-olds" labels but I'm sure they were there somewhere...
We also stopped in Cracker Barrel where they had some really NICE quilts done on I'm sure computerized long arm machines - they were too 'perfect' to be otherwise... these were selling for around SEVENTY DOLLARS....
You can't buy the materials to make a GOOD quilt for that....
People who actually do the craft - no matter what it is - generally will say things like, "wow, great prices," or "fantastic work" or whatever but they won't buy because they also do the craft/sewing/ etc... people who don't know squat about sewing/quilting/crafting or whatever are only interested in the $$$$ they look at a thousand dollar quilt and it doesn't mean any more to them than the thirty dollar piece of junk from China made with material that will fade and fall apart because people aren't really interested in heirloom stuff anymore - they are the people who replace their bath towels by the season so they 'match', or decorate every year, or toss out the table ware and buy new because 'it's such a good deal at walmart'....
and that's what's got the whole world in a huge mess right now because we are a disposable society - toss it out and buy a new one - no need to make it last or keep it because it means something...
whew... boy did I get on my soapbox :mrgreen:
But I have a friend that keeps telling me I should try to sell my quilts on ebay - no, not gonna go there.....
If nobody else does - at least I know that *I* appreciate my quilts and I know what goes into them... :roll: :wink: