Pricing
 

I charge per hour to quilt, but want to know how and what others decide for their prices.... per hour or square inch?

all the long armers around here charge by the square inch.

i must be honest.
i would not pay by the hour.
if the quilter is slow, i'd be expected pay more than the job was worth.
if she's too fast [for her own good] she'd be getting less than it was worth.

per-square-inch gives both parties a set price to agree on in advance.

I have sent quilts out for longarming and have only seen prices per inch. Pricing by the hour could be ambiguous to some people.

The only longarmers I know of that charge by the hour are award winning longarmers when they do custom work. I charge by the S/I. I try to keep careful track of time spent on every quilt and it helps me to figure out how much per S/I to charge for custom.

I took a class once in longarming as a business. The instructor said that she charges by the hour, but her customers don't know that. She is good at estimating how long a particular quilt will take, so she estimates the time and gives the customer a range of pricing, say $250-300. When the quilt is done she fixes the price based on the time taken. That way she is paid for her time, and the customer knows the maximum charge up-front.

This seems like a good way of doing honest business

As a person who 'quilts by cheque' I have only been charged by the square inch for panographs. My friend does charge more for custom quilting. Thinking about being charged by the hour, what would happen if there was a glitch and the LA'er had to rip out and requilt part of the quilt? How would that affect the price?

Meanwhile, in my area, there are places that rent long arm machines by the hour.

edited to add that my friend also charges a certain price for any seam that she has to fix or backing that is not prepped properly.

Does this mean you find by-the-inch quilting to be not honest? And if so, why? Just curious about your thought process, not trying to pick nits. ;)

If the problem was the fault of the longarmer, then that time would and should be "no charge".

This happened to a friend of mine who had been longarming for about 6 months. Her husband did the "intake" on 2 customer quilts. One was to be panto'd, the other was to be custom quilted. On the form, he wrote the brown one was the custom one. Well, turned out both quilts had a lot of brown, but one was pieced and the other appliqued. She panto'd the wrong one and didn't figure it out until she pulled it off the frame and went to load the second quilt. She paid me to unquilt it and steam it for her, and of course she informed the customer of her mistake. But that was no fault of the customer's, so there was no charge.

almost all long armers around here charge by the sq. inch, which is what I do, too. Some charge for loading the quilt or for # bobbins used (I don't--figure that is part of the process and price) I do charge $15/hr for any time spent on repairs to the quilt (i.e. closing seams, trimming threads, pressing)

this seems fair to me.

i would prefer to pay by the task - mainly because i know that i am " slow" - and that others can get a lot more done in less time than it takes me.