Not sure where you're at but I just paid $80 for a nice side to side pantograph on a QS. I don't know if the meandering is done using a pantograph or not but just saying..... She would've custom quilted it for $225, but I wasn't interested in investing that much money into it.

I think that the price is about what you'd pay in the San Francisco area but might be high for other parts of the country. I pay that for a really nice job and pattern from our area 25 miles from SF.

Send me a PM and I will send you my quilters information. She does a beautiful job and she is from Montana. Including mailing costs, it is way less expensive than local. She also provides the batting and thread.

My cousin is a longarmer, and I would be lucky to get her to quilt a queen for me for $200. Of course, there are lots of quilters and few LQ'ers in her area, so it's a question of supply and demand (and quality!). It really depends where you live. For many regions, $200 would be average, or even a steal.

Depends where in the country you are........In my part of Northern VA - that is about the going rate for a nice edge to edge design, regardless what the design is........most charge by the SQ Inch.........and the average runs between $175 and $220...........

Yes our shop is 1.5 a square foot for a meander or stipple. 200 seems high to me too.

Ha! I'm going to their Edmonton shop on Monday for a roadshow. I want to see if the APQS machines they sell are my next jump.

There's also another option, Sparrow offers it, I suspect others do too: rent the longarm and do it yourself. Now, that said, Sparrow for instance wants $30 an hour to rent, they provide thread. You have to take one of their classes to learn how to use the machines, and the class costs $150.

So. How fast to you have to finish a quilt to make that pay for itself vs sending it to even an expensive long arm quilter? Even discounting the cost of the class, you have to finish the quilt in 6 hours or less to be "ahead".

That's just paying for the equipment, and make no mistake, your long armer is either paying for her equipment, or had to at some point in the past. The TOL APQS Millenium is probably pushing $20,000 in Canada (before anyone calls me out on that, shipping / duty / exchange rate / Taxes etc on $17,900 and a pallet of boxes and other bits are going to be pricy) and how about that "quilt path" computerization?

Now, what's your time worth. Is your long armer at least as talented as you are at using the long arm? Should she be making what you estimated your hourly worth at?

How long does it take to load the quilt, and quilt it? I've done lap and crib sized on my short arm in about an hour and a half, and about 20 minutes to load it (I'm getting better, but as a novice, it would take me this long or more to load a queen even with leader grips.)

Nope, you're not the only one. I think it's almost a double standard. I think it's an "end user syndrome". As the "seller" we want our product and skills to be recognised and valued for what they are. As the "buyer" we want the best "deal".

Wow..that seems really high to me. I would never pay $200 for a queen quilt...that would be more than making it to begin with. I guess I have a really fabulous LAQ in my area...who would never charge that...I provide the batting and the binding and have never paid over $100 and that includes king.

Wow.....I'm thinking def too high......but then we've found a really good deal here, lady did a queen size quilt for a friend of mine for 100-125 and that was the batting, backing and quilting.

I just had a quilt done here that was slightly less than a queen size. Including batting, not including binding I paid $67. It's nothing fancy but it's a nice heart pattern. I felt like I got an awesome bargain!