Profannie, I also LAQ and have made memory quilts (both t-shirts and others using a variety of fabrics). I have to say that the mixing of fabrics can be a real bear when it comes to getting a quilt that looks awesome--they just don't play well together sometimes! I find that as a LAQ I sometimes have to lose $$ on the project so keep my quilting reputation intact when I run into problems--I had a marker that I could not remove, finally did, but had to wash the quilt (something I never do to another person's quilts!) so that baby quilt was done for free--lesson learned with that marker! Recently I had a new roll of bat that supposily had more fiber so should quilt up little puffier, which is what my customer wanted. Well, it didn't! So I gave her a 50% discount on the bat--she was a first time customer so I may/may not get more quilts from her. But I wanted her to know that I recognized a problem and wanted to make it right. I guess maybe where I'm going with this is that I would have requested she mail it back and fix it myself, rather than to have her take it to a LQS that I was unfamiliar with to critique & fix. I think as a business owner we sometimes need to be ready to take a $$ loss in order to be successful.
also, you make it sound like you are not charging a reasonable rate for your work as a form of practice--I would definitely stop doing that! It will encourage your customers to think that your work is not really good--and that is a pretty quilt, a tough pattern and you did a nice job!