I had a quilt done for my DS for his birthday a couple of years ago. At that time my cousins wife did it for me and charged me $125.00 which I thought was a very good price.
Tonight the DH and I were talking about it and DH said you paid her that for two hours work?
I told him it takes a lot longer than two hours to do a quilt. (I put the border on. Ok, I like doing borders) I supplied the top, backing. She supplied the batting and the thread and the quilting time.
SO...I guess my question is..when you start on a quilt, putting it together, getting in on the machine and doing the stiching..how long does it take you in actual quilting time?
DH is usually pretty reasonable on most things, but I can't get him to understand how much goes into doing this.
Don't want to put anyone on the spot, but... Thanks for your answers.

It depends on the quilting you want. Pantographs and free motion, simple side to side designs don't take as long as custom work. Some quilters have expensive computer guided machines, but they must be programed too, this takes time and expeience. I can do a simple freehand design in a couple of hours on a double bed size quilt. This is nothing like the wonderful creative custom work we see from many professional quilters. Custom designs can take days or weeks to complete. Most quilters have a fee schedule for different desities and techniques. As in most things, you get what you pay for. Professional quilters have a huge investment in thier machines, designs, and time learning thier craft.

Maybe DH has a magic wand he would like to share with us. I just finished a over-sized twin quilt with a 4 inch cross-hatch grid that took me right at 12 hours to quilt by machine. NO, not all 12 hours in a row, but 3 days of 4 hours each session. As far as the blocks themselves go, I could complete around 2 an hour if life doesn't step in and make demands. The binding was another 2 hours from start to finish. If I added up all the hours, my best guestimate is it took me just about a week and a half of 8 hour days. (No time off for weekends either.) I'm sending a picture of the finished quilt and the block itself. $125.00 is darned inexpensive for the work you paid to have done.

The other day when I dropped a quilt off at the quilter she was just finishing up one she had been working on for quite some time. She said she had about 40 hrs. in it. There was a lot of detail and she does beautiful work. I am sure it was more than $125 but probably not $10 an hr. ($400) either. In my opinion they earn their money. If she supplied the batting and thread you got a good deal. I just paid my quilter $140 to do a quilt that was smaller than a queen and I supplied the batting. I thought I got a good deal.

It takes time to load a quilt, also. They don't just jump on the frame. That alone takes about an hour for a full size quilt. Then a simple over all meander is another 2-3 hours if all goes well--no thread breaks, lumps to quilt out, funky borders, tension issues, etc.

Tell him how much money you could save and how much you could make if you had your own longarm!!! If he believes she only spent a couple of hours and made that much he might be very willing to buy you a machine, LOL!

My DH LA's for me & my Mother. For a Custom job around here, $300 - $400 is dirt cheap with the LA'er supplying batting, thread and her time. A Pantograph would be cheaper but still probably $200 or better. I have paid as high as $600 for a Queen sz done as a Custom job. When you think of some of these machines costing over $20,000, lessons and the endless hrs of practice & time, they have to charge more than minimum wage. Especially them supplying batting, thread and sometimes a backing. Usually around 4 cents per sq inch & higher, would be a good estimate.

I believe the going rate here is a penny and a half PER square inch, so it depends on the size. It takes a lot longer to load a queen size than a crib size.

It only takes 5 mins to plant a garden, but it takes HOURS to get the garden plantable. There is always that behind the scenes time, and that is costly.

Compare for him the LA's time invested vs. YOUR time invested. The way I see it, I could save some money by doing a bad job myself on my DSM, or showcase my time by paying somebody.

what she said!

Granted, I am a beginner at LAing. But to just load a quilt, backing and batting on takes at least 2 hours. This includes measuring both back and top to find center and ensure neither is too badly out of square. The quilting itself, even a freehand all over pattern like a meander takes more than a couple of hours too. You need to reload bobbins and recheck tension and this time frame is assuming everything goes smooth and you don't have any issues.

Before I got my LA I sent a quilt out to be done by Green Fairy. This was a custom quilt job so I paid 3.5 cents per s/i. When I got it back I was so thrilled and asked her how long did it take as there was so much detail quilting and a lot of SID ruler work. She said she estimated it had about 40 hours in it but couldn't be sure because of interuptions by kids etc.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news to your DH but he is grossly under-estimating the amount of time it takes to quilt on a LA when you figure all the time besides actual quilting time spent on any quilt. You got a very fair price with batting included.

It does take a lot longer to load a quilt then people. Then it there are problems with the top or back longer yet.I don't think that is too bad. Even for a simple panto.

It is like any other business, there is your time, electricity, the cost of paying for the machine, maintenance, threads, computer programs for some, classes paid for/more in the future, batting, pantograms, other supplies, etc....

After factoring all of this in, it is no different than any other business in the way they calculate their prices :D:D:D

I quilt professionally and even after doing it for 7 or 8 years, I rarely finish anything in 2 hours (maybe a simple large meander on a table runner size LOL)! On a larger quilt it takes 1 hour or more just to prep and load. For a simple larger allover quilting design on a full to queen sized quilt would take at least 4 hours total. That's if all goes right and the quilt doesn't have any 'issues' like full borders, open seams, etc.

One thing to remind your DH is that even if it seems like the hourly rate is high, that is NOT what the LAer earns. Lets say a quilt takes 4 hours and the charge is $100. That seems like the LAer is earning $25/hour. However, from that amount she needs to take out taxes, insurance, supplies, machine payments, training, etc. I've heard to figure only 1/3 of the hourly rate actually goes to the LAer. So in this case SHE would only be earning about $8.33/hour. Not much for a job that takes practice and talent to do well.

Thanks for all the help, Ladies. The husband is having humble pie for dinner and he says he tips his hat to you. (If he wore a hat. LOL) Thank you for all the hard and beatuful work you do and the wonderful quilts that everyone here makes. Love being on this board!!!

The other thing that has to be taken into account is the huge investment for a LA machine!

Thankfully, that's one thing I have no interest in... I'm more than happy to have somebody who knows what they are dooing quilt my tops. Between the machine, their time and their skill, I think they earn every penny!

It depends on the quilting and the size of the quilt. For just the quilting, with a medium density edge-to-edge, it takes me about 5 hours to do a queen sized quilt. That includes loading time, quilting, taking the quilt off the machine, serging the edge, and tidying up strings, fuzz, etc.