Originally Posted by
quiltingshorttimer
As a long arm quilter, I try to find out what the customer is thinking--both design, thread choice, etc. Often they don't really have a clear design in mind--so I'll suggest a couple of designs. But first and foremost is finding out her price range--like most quilters, I charge more for hand quided vs. panto, dense quilting vs light meander/stipple.
Regarding panto--while I much prefer to work at the front of the machine and do hand guided/custom, sometimes a complex piecing quilt is best highlighted by a panto or edge to edge.
Exactly this! Sometimes - especially in times where I'm not as creative as usual - little to no guidance from the customer makes the job extremely difficult. I would rather they came in with an example or one I saw in the shop I service machines at, there was a whole plan drawn out before the guy even brought his gorgeous denim quilt in to be quilted.
I try to start with "how dense do you like you're quilting? Do you like more traditional quilting (though sometimes the top itself will give that away) or more modern? What's your price range?" but even these questions are vulnerable to "Oh I like everything!"
The last quilt I did, she liked everything and had a million vague ideas and was sure anything I chose would be fine. Then the final nail in the coffin: Take your time, no rush at all. The only saving grace was a mutual friend telling me what the first friend was hoping the quilt to stay in the range of price wise. I still probably worked for $5 an hour by the time you figure in the time spent auditioning designs and creating a custom panto and the SITD.
Sometimes I find the design lends itself to an easily repeatable pattern but not a full panto. For that braid I mentioned, I created a custom panto for just the braid portions of the quilt, so I knew I'd have the same spacing on all 8 braid pieces. It doesn't look like a panto but a small portion of it is pantoed.