Happy 2016 and a Situation

I wish everyone a happy and prosperous 2016 filled with LOTS of customer quilts for you to work on!

January is typically a slow(er) month for machine quilters. This is the time to take a break and re-charge yourself, clean your quilting room (mine is a disaster), work on some of your own projects, and maybe make some samples of new techniques and patterns you have acquired last year. You can then offer these new patterns and techniques to your customers at a higher fee!

The start of a new year is a great time to raise your prices! Even if it is only half a cent raise, at least it is a raise. If you are normally charging one and a half cents per square inch (,015), change it to two cents per inch (.02). You just gave yourself a raise – which you deserve!

You also do NOT have to let your customers know that you are raising your prices. Just do it! The next time your customer comes to you, quote them the new, higher price and don’t say anything about it. I will bet that your customer won’t even notice the difference.

Here are some numbers – A Queen Size quilt, 90 x 108 inches = 9720 square inch (psi). The old price of .015 cents psi would equal $145. The NEW price of .02 cents psi equals $194.40, which I would round up to either $195 or $200.

By raising your price by one half a cent, you just gave yourself a $50 raise! And, if you quilted 5 Queen Size quilts per month, you would have an extra $250 for doing the same kind and same amount of work you did in the past!!

I now want to change subjects completely.

I have been talking and emailing with a professional machine quilter and she has a very unique situation. With her permission, I am going to outline what her problem is and see if you have any suggestions to help her.

This quilter lives in a medium sized metropolitan city. The area she lives in, over the last many years has changed considerably and it now considered “un-safe to live in” (her words) and her customers don’t and won’t come to her home to drop off their quilts.

She has enough customers, does quality work, charges a very good price for her services and needs her quilting income to help support herself.

Because her area is has a high crime rate, she has no vehicle (too many times her car was stolen or vandalized) and must use public transportation to get around. If needed, she can – and has – rented a car for the day, but must travel by bus to the car rental office.

She is in the process of moving to a different, safer location, but that is still several months away, if everything works out well.

Do you have any ideas or suggestions for her and her situation? If you do, please write them in the comments section.

I have given her some suggestions (I’ll post them later) and now we both would like to hear from you.

This quilter does subscribe to this blog and will be reading your comments.

I thank you in advance for any thoughts, suggestions or comments.