susie-susie-susie

Welcome to the board. I think your wife paid a very fair price especially if she had the binding done. You have come to the right place for quilting advise. The ladies here know just about everything about quilting, and if they don't know, they know where to find the information. Everyone is wonderful. Welcome to you and your wife.
Sue

QuiltE

The real question is .... why is he asking for his wife?
If she was truly concerned, one would think that she'd be doing her own research.

soccertxi

This is just a guess on my part...but I think the $170 for quilting and $30 for the binding. For hand binding , that is a good price. Next time, she can ask the long armer about just applying the binding to the top. I do that for my customers and they love it! Hand stitching is not hard and I have shown other shoppers how to stitch it down. She might enjoy that part...I do!

catrancher

I agree with most everything said here, but the quilter should have informed her of the price adjustment before doing the work. Bindings are not difficult to do or to learn, and your wife might have decided to do that part herself given the choice.

Quilting can be an expensive hobby, but it is also the most gratifying undertaking i've ever done. Please don't get in the way of her developing passion by nit picking about the cost. It's cheaper than marriage counseling.

valleyquiltermo

I have a Gammill long arm quilting machine I paid 12,000.00 for in 2000, I can tell you it has taken quite a few quilts to pay for this machine not including dvds and tuts on learning the craft. Practice, practice, and more practice and I'm still learning. I live in a town of 200 people. Given what I know about cost, you got a good price on the quilting job, as said before your wife can do her own binding a lot of my ladies do but I will if they want to pay me for my time. By the way my husbands tractors cost more then my machines. LOL
Best of luck to your wife.

ywoodruff5

$200 for a queen, which included the binding is cheap compared to what I have paid. As far as how hard it is to do on a regular machine.......I wouldn't even attempt a quilt that large on a regular sewing machine. The strain and stress it puts on your body is not worth it in my opinion. But then again, I have nerve damage and it severely aggravates it which is why I quit doing them on my regular sewing machine. And yes, it is very time consuming to try to do on a regular machine. It has to be securely basted before even taking it to the machine. Then it has to be rolled "just so" in order to get it into the throat plate. I know there are some quilters out there who do use a regular machine to quilt larger quilts and hopefully they can give you some input.

gramarraine

All the advise posted here is good advice. I sometimes get the urge to buy a quilting machine but as deemail has stated you can have a lot of quilts quilted for the cost of a longarm quilter. 200 is fair or a big lower than the prices where I live. Some of the people I know charge more than that for custom design quilting. I have bound quilts for people and would never bind one for less than $30 for a queen. It takes me 3 - 4 hours of hand sewing to put a binding on and if I charge $30 that is not even $10 and hour. My bindings looks good and are worth at least $10 an hour. I have never heard anyone say quilting was a cheap hobby. I think the satisfaction received when the quilt is completed is worth the price.

AshleyR

Barb! I buy tops because I don't like making them! Want to trade services??!

SugarValleyStitches

The pricing seems very normal for Longarm work. As a longarm quilter myself, the prices can range from 1 1/2 cents per square inch and up depending on the desired pattern or custom work. Please realize that the equipment cost for a longarm machine, thread and the time that the quilter takes to actually do the work is the cost. It can take many hours to complete the quilt top to the customers satisfaction. Longarm Quilting is my passion, I love it and it is what I do on a daily basis.

QKO

Those prices are on the average side for longarm work. There is a lot of investment and training, and many hours of practice and lots of materials involved in just learning the craft and getting good enough at it to offer services to others.

The price you were quoted was for the quilting - binding is normally extra. It sounds like there was a misunderstanding on what the original quote covered -- or maybe the binding was ordered after the quilting was completed.

Just as an example of costs involved in quilting - I just paid 250 dollars, up front, for two series of FMQ classes at a local quilt shop, and books and materials are extra. The classes are each 125 dollars and are each three days long. So 250 dollars plus probably another 100 dollars or so in material costs, and also car expenses for 6 - 100 mile round trips. It's not cheap learning to quilt -- if one isn't prepared to invest in the equipment and training it's probably cheaper to send your tops out to be quilted.

OTOH, it's a hobby and I think a very rewarding one that eventually may lead one to go into business with it. And most hobbies require investment.

It could be worse -- I could be into golf.