Help - Price for Quilting?
 

I quilted a quilt for a friend, my first time doing that and I have no idea how much to charge her. Keeping track of time is impossible for me, but my Sweet Sixteen tells me the stitch count was 144,475. I'm not an experienced quilter, so it's not perfect, but she knew that and likes the pictures I sent her of the design I used. It's a combination of free motion quilting and SID around the blocks and elements of the blocks. Is there a rule of thumb here to use?
Thanks for your help.

I've heard of long arm quilters charging in the neighborhood of $.01 to $.02 per square inch. I paid aroound $180 to have a king size quilt quilted several years ago.

Here on the east side of the CT River, the going rate (per square inch) for longarming is as follows:

basting $0.01
edge to edge $0.016 to $0.03
semi-custom $0.02 to $0.03
(edge to edge in center with a different border design or custom meandering design)
custom $0.035 and up

If you know the stitches per minute of your Sweet Sixteen, you can get the time if you'd be more comfortable with a per hour rate than a per square inch rate.

I guess it would depend on the level of your friendship. I don't want to insult you, but I would have a hard time charging a friend. Unless it was discussed prior to the quilting being done. I'm not a long armer, just a beginer- I guess advanced beginer.

I agree. It is VERY difficult to charge a friend for a quilt. You don't want her to think you overcharged her.

It's never a good idea to take on a project(for a fee) without coming to a meeting of the minds beforehand. Consider it a lesson learned and gift it to your friend.

All the LA in our area charge by the sq inch

I would get pricing from other quilters in your area and base it off that. every locatoin has a different average. here the average is 2.5 cents a square inch. but it could be completely different where you are

So very true. I don't do anything without a conversation prior.

Thank you all for some good advice. Actually, she is a member of my guild, not a close friend, and she said right away she wanted to pay me. So I sent an email suggesting a pretty low price but said I would take whatever she felt was right when she sees it. I am not a highly experienced quilter, so it's not perfect, and we did discuss that beforehand. It would have been difficult to do on a long arm, I think, as the batting was very soft and fluffy and would not have stretched well. It was a UFO, block of the month from the guild, signature blocks dated 1990. It was fun and a privilege to do it, and I hope she likes it. I'm really not concerned about making anything on it, though it did take me quite a while.