mac

It is amazing what people expect to pay for quilts as opposed to the cost of making them. Often times, their perception doesn't even cover 1/2 of the cost of the materials, let alone your time an effort.

A co-worker saw an appliqued wall-hanging that I made for a friend and asked if I would make one for her. It never dawned on me to quote a price to her first. So I hand appliqued and machine quilted it, the whole nine yards, and when I asked for $110 for a 36" X 40" quilt (remember, hand appliqued) she really balked. I felt I was giving her a really good deal, considering how long it took me to do it. I told her that she didn't have to buy it, but she reluctantly bought the quilt.

I wish I would have kept it, because she made me feel like I twisted her arm to buy it. That was the last time I ever made a quilt for a paying person. I either make quilts to give to special people or I keep them for myself.

As for the cost of the hobby, we all know that the cost is almost pricing itself almost out of existence. If it wasn't for sales and coupons, I would have a very hard time affording anything new on a fixed income. As it is, I look at all of my hobby stuff: books, videos, notions, tools and fabric and sometimes do a mental calculation on how much money I have tied into all of it and feel really guilty.

My only consolation is that I have been quilting since the mid 70's and my 40 years of collecting quilting things is that they don't expire, rot, or melt-away. Sure, fabric goes out of style, but you can always find a use for it or you can pass it on. And when I die, all of my quilting friends can get together, have a big sale, get pennies on the dollar and give it back to my husband so that he can have that vacation in Tahiti that he always wanted. LOL

mjhaess

I only make quilts for my family and friends...

quiltingshorttimer

I do long arm quilting for others and while our prices here in the Midwest are much cheaper than the Coasts, or even the Chicago area, I'd decided that my custom prices will be 3cent/sq inch--which some in my area gasp at. But while I don't always have a customer quilt to work on, I do have my own waiting, so I really don't mind the lack of heavy business. I also make t-shirt quilts--not my favorite frankly, but refuse to do one for less than 9cents/sq inch for the same reason. I've even carried this philosophy to my quilts donated for charitable auctions--my husband will always bid so that at least the price is over the cost of materials. After making 2 quilts for our church that went for less than materials, I decided it's easier for me to just write a check! But I do think that for non-quilters, much of their unwillingness to pay realistic prices for quilts is because they do not even sew and don't realize the price of materials and the number of hours invested--and it doesn't help that some of us are willing to sell at a loss. To be fair, the whole handmade industry in the US has the same difficulty--my DS and DIL do home decor made from salvaged car parts and run into it and my BIL paints and has the same problem---there's a reason for the phrase "poor artists"!