Originally Posted by
AshleyR
I have one of those "hand-quilted" $39.99 quilts I'll send you too. Those quilts are everywhere here. Not the Walmart quilts, but the ones sold at flea-markets and tourist-shops. I once asked the owner of one of them how they can sell them so cheap. He told me that a woman owns a town and let's people live in the town "for free". There is a fabric factory (he didn't tell me how the tops were made, but I imagine a sewing factory) and they get a oxen-pulled cart full of quilt tops. They have these needles that are 9-inches long and load them up and knock a cart full of quilts out in a week. That's how they pay their rent.
Then tourists come to the Smoky mountains and see these cheap, crappy quilts and think that's how "homemade" quilts are supposed to be! And they buy a $40 hand-crafted souvenir to take back home and then they and their friends think that hand crafts shouldn't be more than $40!
There is a town that is driving distance from me and I was so excited to see they had a shop that sold quilts. So my mom and I went in. This lady had a house that was packed(and I mean packed where you could hardly walk through the place) full of quilts. She was selling them as handmade in the USA. There were some with the made in China labels still on them and she was selling them for $350 and up. I just chuckled and left.
I always love getting the comment that I must have alot of free time to make everything I do. I always want to tell them that I work full time, have three kids that I take care of and still manage to get it done. It's all about how you spent your time. It would take me almost a year to sit and watch 10 hours of tv.
