Quilt repair pricing
 

Repaired a quilt for a lady. Now word is out and others are wanting repairs done. Do/did not want to become the go to lady so will pick my battles carefully :rolleyes: My question is how in the world do I price this kind of thing? I have no idea what to charge this lady for the repair. It is a queen size quilt, picture below, and had to put on a new border (3" wide) and all the 1 1/2" squares. Wasn't as bad as I thought would be as I machine appliqued them on. I just need some idea of what to charge. There were 48 of the small squares plus the border all around. It is the very light green in the pic. Hope some of you knowledgeable ladies out there can help me. Thanks in advance.
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I think pricing would depend - to some extent - to how you did the repairs -

If you hand sewed the patches versus machine sewing them, etc. -

How long did it take?

For how long did it take - I would count the time planning how to fix it, looking for suitable fabric, preparing the fabric, if necessary, and time actually doing the sewing.

(As far as I know, ad agencies charge for "concept time".)

In a case like this I would charge by the hour. I don't know what that number would be - depends on what you feel comfortable with. However it is always best to have a signed agreement in advance, with an estimated price, so the customer knows what to expect.

Because I have not done this sort of thing - I would not have any idea of how long it would take me.

Maybe give a very high estimate - then count a actual time - and then surprise the customer with a lower actual cost?

(Besides, I'm slow - even though I think I do very nice work.)

I think - if I was the customer/client - I would prefer a "price for the job" versus "paying by the hour".

But - again - that's because I know that I'm slow.

From repair/mending jobs I have done, it usually requires something that I did not see on the first look at the project.

Estimate the number of hours you spent and charge at least $10/ hour. If you purchased anything for the project, make sure you charge for that too. If you took fabric from your stash, charge the going LQS rate, not the on sale price you actually paid. You will need to replace your stash at the going rate! Be sure to charge for travel time to purchase any materials.
And please, please, please, if you do this again, put an estimate in writing before you start and get a deposit!

I agree with what's been said. If you decide to go with a fixed price estimate high. There will always be something unexpected that comes up and you need to cover that. Personally, I'd go with time and materials. If they don't want to pay that, it's up to them. It may thin out the number of requests for repair work that you get.

I have a friend that repairs quilts and she quotes between $150 to $1,000. It all depends on how the extent of the damage and the age of the quilt. It all depends on what the client is willing to pay for the repair. Sometimes after she looks at the quilt and quotes a price they decide against it but she is alright with that. I saw the quilt that she repaired for $800. and the client was very happy because of the sentimental value that the family had for the quilt made by their Grandmother.

I think that since you repaired this quilt you now have an idea of how long it took to repair it. This might give you a way to measure how much time and material it took to finish this project and like others have posted pay yourself by the hour + material. You will find that once you quote your price many will change their mind. Good luck. Stay firm.

I charge $1,000 per hour to do mending (I hate mending!) unless it is a quilt I myself made, then repairs are free.

Create an order form that spells out you will charge 1) cost of all materials 2) per hour rate of $??per hour 3) delivery or shipping charges. Then list what your APPROXIMATE time would be. If you machine appliqued this new binding on a queen quilt, you have an idea what time that took. You can use that as a basis. EMPHASIZE that this is an estimate and you will contact them is it starts to vary from that. THEN TAKE A DEPOSIT.

Everyone does things differently....personally I would have gone another route to repair the quilt. Even though it would be time consuming I would have turned the edges under and hand sewn the two pieces with small tiny invisible stitches.