Originally Posted by
Terri D.
I helped an acquaintance with her T-shirt quilt business last Christmas. It's always more work than you think.
Don't forget to factor in your time for creating a layout, plus calculating yardage for and time spent cutting compensating strips, sashing, borders, backing and binding. T-shirts are not created equal in that one shirt's logo may give you a 14" square, whereas another may only yield an 8" square. If you have to account for those size differences, it will require more of your time, for which you should rightly charge.
I make T-shirt quilts and long arm them-but like Terri says, you usually will not find the T's logos are equal size, so you do have to figure out a design--and for me that means cutting the T's to find my largest blocks, designing, then stabilizing and re-cutting/trimming, plus cutting all the other fabric. And like a friend just told me about her business of doing formalwear alterations--it requires skill and problem solving--just like our plumber, mechanic, etc and they don't work for minimum wage (well, beginning mechanics do according to my son!),so why should seamstresses? Just because we are mostly women? FYI--I charge 9 cents per square inch which puts me in the average range in my area and this does include all material except T's and long arm quilting.