Pricing Survey Results

I want to thank everyone who participated in the Pricing Survey I posted a few weeks ago. It was fun looking at all the results and then compiling them so YOU can read them.

There is a little too much information in the responses to post directly on this blog. I made a pdf file of the responses for each quilt. Just click on the highlighted text and the pdf file should open. If you want, feel free to save the results on your own computer.

Feel free to comment on the results either by leaving a comment below or sending me an email at longarmu@aol.com

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Quilt #1 – Scraps & Chevrons, 55 x 55 inches
3,025 square inches, 21.0 square feet, 2.35 square yards
To view the survey results for Quilt #1 Quilt 1 Results

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Quilt #2 – Winter Night, 61 x 76 inches
4,636 square inches, 32.20 square feet, 3.60 square yards
To view the survey results for Quilt #2 Quilt 2 Results

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Quilt #3 – Christmas Diamonds, 56 x 64 inches
3,584 square inches, 24.9 square feet, 2.77 square yards
To view the survey results for Quilt #3 Quilt 3 Results

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Quilt #4 – Double 9 Patch, 60 x 78 inches
4,680 square inches, 32.5 square feet, 3.61 square yards
To view the survey results for Quilt #4 Quilt 4 Results

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I welcome your comments, thoughts or anything else about these quilts and the responses to the survey. Leave your comments below or send me an email at longarmu@aol.com

 

 

The Process of Pricing

I recently taught a Longarm University, Machine Quilting Basics class, where I teach people how to use their longarm machine and how to run a successful machine quilting business. As part of this class, we do some role playing where they (the students or one designated student) is my customer, I am the (professional) quilter and we go through the steps of taking in a customer quilt.

I also do quilting for my favorite charity, American Hero Quilts. I usually have about 6 – 10 quilts that need to be quilted and when I’m done with them I drop them off and take a few more home for quilting.

In this class, I used one of the American Hero Quilts from my “stack” and we discussed quilting, timing, possible problems, etc., etc. The more I looked at that quilt, the more I WANTED to quilt it – like, right now!!! I had a lot of commitments coming up and knew I couldn’t quilt it, like, right now.

But life is strange! The commitments were postponed a week or two, and suddenly, there WAS time available to work on this quilt! So I did.

In the process of working on this quilt, I decided to write about my process of pricing a quilt, timing the quilting and other things. Unfortunately, I did not get a photo of the quilt before quilting, but you can see from the finished photos, the quilt turned out really, really nice!

Click on the photos for a larger view.

Let’s start at the beginning

This quilt is 67 x 85 inches (5,695 square inches) and nicely pieced. There were some thick seam joins, but the quilt laid mostly flat and square. (I have no clue who pieced the quilt.)

In all my many years of quilting and piecing, I don’t recall seeing a block setting like this quilt. (There may be an adaptation of it being made in the not too distant future.)

As I was looking at the quilt, I knew that an all over design, either a pantograph or a free hand all over design, was not going to be quilted on that quilt. I also “saw” lots and lots of feathers in the quilting! Which means that the quilt will be custom quilted. (Custom quilted being defined as different patterns in different parts of the quilt.)

I knew that I was going to change the color of thread to match the colors of the fabric.

I estimated that it would take 6 – 7 hours of quilting to complete this quilt.

With the above information, here is how I would determine a price for the quilting –

My base price for quilting (which is in my brain and NOT published anywhere – except here) is 3 cents per inch. So I did the math (5,695 psi x .03) and came up with $170.85. Which, for what I wanted to quilt, was TOO low. So I did the math again at .035 cents per square inch and came up with $199.32 which I rounded up to $200. This is a better price, but I knew the quilting would take more time, so I added another $50 and determined that $250 would be the LABOR ONLY price of the quilt.

Note: this price is for free hand quilting only. If I were going to use templates on any part of the quilt, I would add at least an EXTRA 25% minimum ($62.50 rounded up to at least $70) to the labor price.

If you want to take the math a step further, the price of $250 divided by 5,695 si = .0438 cents per square inch.

To recap, this quilt, 67 x 85 inches, will be free hand custom quilted with feathers, no templates, for $250.

When working with my customer, they know NOTHING about my calculations and they are presented with the labor only price.

I also estimated that there would be a $15 charge for thread and $15 for Soft & Bright (Warm Company) polyester batting, which was purchased wholesale.

For an blog article about the cost of thread Click Here

I am also putting the binding on – making the binding and applying it with my home sewing machine. For this I charge $3 per running / perimeter foot. This quilt has 26 running / perimeter feet x $3 = $78 for binding.

The total charge for this quilt (if I were charging for it) is

Quilting labor $250
Thread $ 15
Batting $ 15
Binding $ 78
Total $358 + any state sales taxes

Quilting Time

My quilting time break down is – (time is measured in hundredths – 15 minutes = .25, 30 minutes = .50, 45 minutes = .75

Putting the quilt on the machine: .50
Stitching time: 2.75 07/28/18
Stitching time: 3.00 07/29/18
Total hours 6.25 hours

Quilting details

All the quilting was done free hand. I did mark registration lines on the quilt top so that the curves of the feathers were consistent (not perfect). There was a little more time used because I changed my threads two or three times in each workspace** and I did “turn the quilt” to quilt the side borders. I chose to turn the quilt because I was using a different color of thread in the borders than in the body of the quilt. (For information on Turning the Quilt Click Here)

** I find that this is the most efficient way of quilting mostly equal sections of same color fabrics in a workspace.

Hours / Pricing break down

It took me a total of 6.25 hours to finish this quilt and I would be charging my customer $250. If you divide $250 by 6.25, that equals $40 per hour! Not too shabby!

Binding Break down

It has been a long while since I have actually timed myself on adding the binding to a quilt and I was very pleasantly surprised at the results. I estimated it would take me about 1-1/2 hours to put the binding on, but it took a little less than 1 hour!

Here are the details –

Making the binding – cut strips selvage to selvage, stitched them together and pressed wrong sides together: 20 minutes
Stitching the binding to the back of the quilt : 20 minutes
Top stitching the binding in place on the front of the quilt: 20 minutes
Total binding time 1 hour

Cost of binding $78, time to do it 1 hour. No math involved and I LIKE those numbers!!!

If you are not offering binding services, I beg you to re-consider. You are losing $$$ – a LOT of $$$!! I know that you will not bind every quilt that comes to you, but if you offer binding services, you CAN make a substantial profit!

I hope that this has given you some insight into how I price a quilting project and how the timing of your work on a project can help you determine if you are making a profit – or not!

I welcome your thoughts and comments. Please feel free to leave them in the Leave a Reply box below. Or, if you would prefer, you can send me an email at longarmu@aol.com

What Happens Next??

I belong to a couple of online quilting groups and recently someone had posted that they had accidentally ripped a hole in a quilt they were working on. They were rolling up the quilt with the needle in the down position, the machine caught on something and BAM!! there was a small rip on the quilt top!

This is something the every quilter dreads! (Yes, it WILL happen to you. If it hasn’t yet, just wait! In fact, many people say that you aren’t a “real quilter” until something like this DOES happen to you! )

In this situation, it turns out it was the quilters own quilt and she was able to fix it. But ….., what if this was a customer quilt? What would you do?

As professional quilters, we all do our best to complete our customer’s quilts. But stuff happens and we have to deal with it.

Here is the scenario –

Just as above, you are working on a customer quilt. Somehow, you make a small rip, let’s say less than 1 inch long, in the quilt top. Let’s say it’s in the middle of the side border on a fairly floral fabric. After you get finished crying and yelling at yourself, how would you deal with this situation. Or, if you have had this happen to you, how did you deal with it.

Here are some questions for you to think about –

Would you contact the customer after it happened or wait until the quilt gets picked up? Or not tell them at all?

Would you fix the rip (I would use some fusible under the rip, then some Fray Check on the ragged edges and possibly slightly alter my quilting in that area to stitch over the rip) or have your customer fix it herself after she picks it up?

If you fix the quilt and the repair is not noticeable, do you tell your customer about it or not?

Would you give your customer a discount on the quilting fee or a discount on future quilting? Or not?

Just for fun, let’s have another scenario. This time the rip is more in the middle of the quilt top, in a noticeable area, maybe on a darker fabric and the light batting is showing through. What would you do and how would you deal with this?

Here is another thing to think about, what were you doing that created the rip in the quilt? If it is something that you have some control over, can you avoid doing it in the future?

For me personally, I avoid like the plague moving the quilt with the needle down. I know, a lot of you were taught to do this to line up patterns, pantographs, etc., but there are ways to move your quilt without the needle down.

Sometimes, you have no control over making a rip in a quilt. Many years ago, here in the Northwest, we had an earthquake. I had a friend who was working on a quilt during the earthquake and because of the shaking, a small-ish hole was ripped in the quilt. When she explained to her customer what happened, the customer said, “leave the hole as it is. That will be my reminder of the earthquake!”

Take some time to think about what you would do in this situation. If this has happened to you, feel free to share your experience in the comments below. If you would prefer, you can email me privately at longarmu@aol.com

And yes, I have ripped a hole in a few quilts over the many years of my quilting. My choice is to fix the hole the best I can, complete the quilting, tell the customer about it when the quilt gets picked up and, if the repair is somewhat noticeable, I will give a discount.

My last experience like this was about a year ago – I ripped a small hole in the backing fabric when I was taking out some stitches in an area very close to the raw edge of the quilt. I fused matching fabric over the hole and quilted over the fused fabric. I did tell my customer and, since it was such a small area, I did not charge her for the thread I used in her (super sized) quilt!

I look forward to reading about your experiences and your thoughts on this.

Challenge Update #1

Last month about this time I challenged you to time yourself when you are working on any quilt, whether it was for a customer, for a charity, for family or for yourself. I am hoping that by doing this, you have discovered some interesting information.

To begin discovering some of this interesting information, let’s start with the obvious.

To determine how much $$ you made per hour when working on an individual quilt, take the total hours worked on the quilt (from when you timed yourself on this quilt) and divide it into the price you are charging.

If you go back to my post from last month, (to view that post Click Here)I documented two customer quilts I worked on. The first one, Starry Night Quilt, 74 x 83 inches, took me 4.83 hours to quilt. I charged my customer $250 for the quilting labor. So, $250 divided by 4.83 = $51.75 per hour that I “made” when I was working on this quilt.

The other quilt I documented was All My Scraps are Stars, 91 x 108 inches, with a LOT of detail quilting. This quilt took me 14.57 (rounded down to 14.5) hours to quilt. I charged my customer $500 for the quilting labor. So, $500 divided by 14.5 = $34.48 per hour that I “made” when I was working on this quilt.

These numbers do not include any business or operating expenses or any self employment taxes. A very general calculation would be – one third of your hourly “wage” goes to business and operating expenses, another third goes to self employment taxes and possibly recovering the cost of your quilting machine, the remaining third is your profit or what you actually make! Yes, all this can be individualized to your personal situation.

If you track what you make per hour, per quilt, over time, you should be able to come up with two important pieces of information. You should determine 1) the average time it takes you to quilt a quilt – you can break that down into quilt sizes like King size, Queen size, etc. – and 2) you should be able to determine an average hourly rate / wage you are making when you are working on these quilts depending on the pattern / technique you are quilting.

For example – I can quilt a Queen size quilt with medium density, “light” custom, free hand quilting in about 6 – 8 hours. If I charge, on average, $300 to quilt a Queen size quilt, then my hourly “wage” will be between $50 – $37.50 per hour. ($300 divided by 6 hours = $50 per hour, $300 divided by 8 hours = $37.50 per hour.)

Knowing this information, when I am consulting with my customer about quilting designs – and I have been tracking the time it takes to quilt the patterns / designs / techniques – I can recommend quilting designs that are appropriate for that quilt, that I can quilt in 6 hours, maybe less, but no more than 8 hours.

Also knowing this information, if the quilt says it needs a pattern / design / technique that will take MORE time, then you can start raising your price accordingly for that project. Estimate how many extra hours it will take you to quilt the particular pattern / design / technique, multiply that by your hourly “wage” and add that to your price.

Example – Let’s take the Queen size quilt from above and even though I may be doing somewhat simple quilting in the body of the quilt (let’s assume there are many busy prints in the body of the quilt) my customer decides she wants a feathered cable design in the border. I quilt the feathered cable design with templates, which is a more complex, time consuming technique. I have to determine HOW much extra time I will need to quilt this border design. Let’s assume that I estimate that it will take an extra 3 hours to quilt the border. For simplicity’s sake, let’s say I have an hourly wage of $30 per hour. Because I KNOW all this information, I will ADD an additional three hours to my estimated time of quilting and ADD an additional 3 hours of my hourly wage to this quilt ($30 x 3 = $90, rounded up to $100 to make things easy.) An estimated price then would be in the $400 range, for quilting labor only!! Batting, backing, thread and binding are all charged separately and not included in this price.

What if you don’t know how much extra time it will take you to quilt a different pattern / design / technique? Then I add percentages such as an extra 25%, 50%, 75% or more, depending on the complexity or difficulty of the quilting.

For our Queen size example from above with $300 for “basic” quilting, 25% extra would be $75, which I would probably round up to $100, which is about 30% of the basic price, 50% extra would be an additional $150, etc.

I can hear some of you right now saying, “Cindy, you are a crazy woman!! I could NEVER charge my customers that much money for my quilting!!” And I would answer you by saying “Why not???”

YOU are a highly trained, skilled, professional person. If machine quilting were so “simple” your customer could do it themselves – but they don’t. YOU have invested thousands and thousands of dollars into your quilting machine. YOU have invested hours and hours of your life learning how to use your quilting machine. YOU have invested more hours and hours and hours practicing, practicing, practicing your quilting skills. YOU can do things with your quilting machine that your customer CAN’T do and they are paying YOU to do this!

I travel around the country and talk to other quilters about their businesses. So many quilters are “locked” into the length x width x XX cents per square inch pricing. They will do all sorts of fancy, complex quilting – free hand, pantograph, computerized, templates, etc. – and NEVER charge anything more than length x width x XX cents per square inch, AND they will spend HOURS AND HOURS AND HOURS working on the quilt with NO idea of how many $$$ they are making (or loosing) per hour!

Let’s say you are thinking of putting a deck or porch on the back of your house. You want the deck to be 7-1/2 feet x 9 feet. You talk to a contractor about this and he says a basic deck / porch, no railings, nothing fancy will be $500. You think that having railings around the deck / porch might be a good idea, especially when the kids and /or grand kids come to visit. You also say that you would like to have a cover over the deck / porch, seats built into the railings and some planter boxes on the top of the railings. Is the contractor going to do all of the extras for the same $500 cost? I don’t think so!! He would – and he should – raise the price he is charging you according to what you want to have done to your deck / porch.

Why are YOU any different from the contractor in this example? If you haven’t figured it out, 7-1/2 x 9 feet is 90 x 108 inches, the same size as a Queen size, pre-cut batting! Think of yourself as a “quilting contractor” – the more quilting your customer wants, the more YOU SHOULD be charging for it, and they should and WILL pay for it!

Trust me, I have a LOT more to say about this, but for now, let’s finish with this – keep timing yourself on every quilt you work on. Begin to collate and group your information by quilt size, technique, pattern, etc., and see what information is starting to emerge about YOUR quilting.

As always, please leave a comment – I WILL be wearing my flame proof underwear or maybe I should make it a flame proof suit!

If you would like, send me a personal email at longarmu@aol.com

Take the Challenge!

Usually around the first of the year I write about raising your prices – which you should be doing –  but this year, I want to do something a little bit different.

I have a challenge for YOU! For the next 30 days, I want you to TIME yourself when you are working on ANY quilt.

No, this is not to play “beat the clock,” or “I can quilt faster than you can!” This is to show you how much time you are taking to quilt a quilt. By tracking your time for at least 30 days, you should see some interesting trends developing. Before we talk about interesting trends, let’s talk about what to “time.”

FWIW – I time myself on 98 % of the quilts I work on, and yes, I can give you all sorts of timing details on the quilts I have done!

What to time  – I break my timing into three major sections – putting the quilt on the machine, actual quilting time and “after quilting” time.

Putting the Quilt on the Machine – Why is this important information? Remember back to when you were a beginning quilter (even if you weren’t quilting as a business.) How long did it take you to put a Queen size quilt on your machine? If you were like me, it took about 3 hours, maybe longer. My thoughts were, there is SO much fabric and SO many big pieces and where to do they all go and what gets pinned, etc., etc. Today, after putting (literally) a thousand + quilts on my machine, I can put a Queen size quilt on the machine in about 35 – 45 minutes, if there are no major problems.

If you are a fairly new quilter, after more than a few quilts, you should see a decrease in the amount of time it takes you to put a quilt on the machine.

Once you are aware of the time it takes you to put a quilt on the machine, you may be able to figure out more efficient ways to put a quilt on your machine.

Even though you are not “quilting” when you are putting a quilt on to the quilting machine, I do consider it as “quilting time” and include it in the total time it takes to quilt the quilt.

Actual Quilting Time – This is the time you are standing at the machine and actually working on a quilt. It makes no difference if you are quilting with a computer or hand guiding the machine. It also makes no difference if you are quilting pantographs, doing free hand work, working with templates or doing super duper over the top super dense custom quilting. If you are touching the machine, the needle is moving, stitches are being made, bobbins are being wound or you are moving the quilt from workspace to workspace, this is actual quilting time! This will be the bulk of the time you are working on your quilt.

For many years, I drove a school bus and I had to keep track of my time on the routes, etc., Instead of counting minutes, we counted hundredths of the hour. Here is how it worked – the clock was divided into 100’s, so 15 minutes was .25, 30 minutes was .50 and 45 minutes was .75 of an hour. For simplicity’s sake, 5 minutes is calculated a .08 of an hour. This makes things so much easier to calculate and I continued doing this when I time my quilts. Example – if it took me 45 minutes to put a quilt on the machine, I would write down .75 hours. If I was quilting for 55 minutes, I would write down .91 (45 minutes = .75, 10 minutes = .16. So, .75 + .16 = .91) If I was quilting for 1 hour, 30 minutes, I would write down 1.50 hours.

Most smart phones have a clock / timer/ stopwatch function on them. Some people like to use the stop watch function, some people prefer to set the time for a specific amount of time and work until the timer goes off. However you like to track your time, do it and write it down.

Many times when I’m quilting I listen to podcasts, each of which is about 40 minutes long. I will keep track of the number of podcasts I have listened to when I calculate my time.

If nothing else, write down your start and finish time and figure how much time it was.

Note: I like to add the date to my times. Many times I am working only a few hours a day on a project – the project may take only 6 hours, but it might have taken me 4 days to do them!

While you are timing yourself, you can break the time down into categories / sections / repeats / rows / techniques, etc.

For example, when I quit pantographs, in addition to the time I am tracking on the whole project, I will time myself on the actual quilting time – the time the machine is moving – on at least one row of the pattern. Let’s say that for a queen size quilt, from raw edge to raw edge, one row of pattern took 30 minutes of quilting time. It took another 10 minutes to do the “roll up” and re-setting of the pattern, etc. You can calculate that it will take 40 minutes (.50 + .16 = .66 hours) to quilt one row. If your pattern is 10 inches wide and your quilt is 100 inches long, that will 10 pattern repeats. At 40 minutes /.66 hour per row that would equal about 6-1/2 hours to quilt.

I do a fair amount of template work. When I am working with templates, I will time myself per block / motif / border section / etc., when using that particular template, in addition to the total time it takes to finish the quilting.

As you can see, in addition to your actual quilting time, you can break your time into as many “pieces” as you want to determine all sorts of things.

Those of you who “float” the bottom of the quilt top, I would love to know how much time you take to “fuss” with the quilt top to keep it straight and smooth each time you do a “roll up” of the quilt. If some of you could send me this info, I would greatly appreciate it.

Then there is the “After Quilting” Time – What is after quilting? To me, that is things that need to be done to the quilt before the quilt is taken off the machine and before it is either ready for binding or to be given back to the customer.

For example – After the main quilting is done, and before the quilt is taken off the machine, I inspect the quilt both top and the quilt bottom / backing fabric to make sure the stitching is good, that there are no tension issues on the back, no un-quilted spaces, etc. If anything needs to be fixed with the machine, I do it at this time. Many times when I use templates I will drag my thread from place to place. These “dragged threads” need to be trimmed from the back, and yes, I time this too! The threads have already been trimmed on the quilt front during quilting.

I trim my quilts so that there is about 1-1/2 to 2 inches of backing fabric and batting from the raw edges of the quilt top before I give the quilt back to my customer, if the customer is applying the binding. (All the trimmings are returned to the customer, unless they are very small.) I generally don’t time this, but I will allow an extra 15 minutes (.25 hours.)

I like to make a chart and write everything down.

Here are some numbers from an actual quilt I did – click on any photo for a larger view

Starry Night Quilt, 73 x 84 inches
click on the chart for a larger view.

I like to round my numbers, so this quilt took me (rounded up) 5 hours from start to finish. This quilt was free hand quilted.

Here is another quilt – the photo is of half the quilt.

All My Scraps are Stars, 91 x 108 inches
click on the chart for a larger view

This quilt was quilted free hand, but there was a TON of quilting , LOTS of detail work and it was HUGE!! As you can see, this quilt took me 14-1/2 hours (rounded down slightly) over 6 days to complete! I also had some stitching issues that had to be taken out and re-quilted and those were included in the times above.

I don’t want to overwhelm you with more details, so I will end here by saying – accept my challenge and time yourself for the next 30 days and see if you can see some interesting trends in YOUR quilt and quilting.

I will write more about this in 30 days. Until then, keep on quilting!

Feel free to leave a comment and if you would rather send me an email, please do so at longarmu@aol.com

Customer Discounts ?

Many professional machine quilters give discounts to their customers. These discounts are usually about 10 – 20%, sometimes more, and can be for a variety of reasons – new customer discount, returning customer discount, sunny day discount, rainy day discount, showing up at the door discount, etc.

Personally, I don’t give discounts. I feel that you loose way too any $$ with discounts. Let’s run some numbers.

Example – Queen Size Quilt, moderate density quilting, it doesn’t matter if the quilting is free hand, pantograph or computerized.

 If you charge $250 for this quilt, with a 10% discount ($25) your charge (to the customer) would be$225, with a 15% discount ($37.50) your charge is $212.50, with a 20% discount ($50) your charge would be $200.

If you charge $300 for this quilt, with a 10% discount ($30) your charge would be $270, with a 15% discount ($45) your charge is $256, with a 20% discount ($60) your charge would be $240

Note: If you would charge a different amount, your numbers would be different.

No matter what discount you give to your customer, it still takes you the same amount of time to complete the quilting. If you calculate your cost per hour for quilting – the time it takes you to complete a quilt divided by the cost of the quilting only = cost per hour. (We will discuss “cost per hour” in an upcoming post.)

Again, some numbers – The Queen Size quilt in our example above took 6 hours to complete.

At full price of $250 divided by 6 (hours) = $41.66 per hour. For the discounted prices, $225 divided by 6 = $37.50 ph, $212.50 divided by 6 = $35.41 ph and $200 divided by 6 =$33.33 ph.

At full price of $300 divided by 6 (hours) = $50 per hour. For the discounted prices, $270 divided by 6 = $45 ph, $256 divided by 6 = $42.66 ph and $240 divided by 6 =$40 ph.

Note: NO operating expenses or self employment taxes have been taken out of the cost per hour amount.

You can see that the amount of $$ you are making per hour decreases significantly with each discount given.

Before we go any further, I want you to think about your customers. I would be willing to bet that most of your customers do not come to you ONLY because you offer a discount. Your customers come to you because they like your style of quilting, the quality of your quilting, your personality, your lifestyle, etc. Price usually isn’t at the top of their list when looking for a machine quilter.

OK, I do know that there are some people where price is the ONLY thing they look for in a quilter. Fortunately, these people are mostly few and far between and YOU get to choose if you want to work with them. Personally, if someone comes to me and wants me to quilt “cheap”, I just tell them – nicely – that I don’t do cheap quilting and it may be better for them to take their quilt someplace else. And yes, I have had to do this a few times in my machine quilting career.

So, if price is NOT the only reason your customer is coming to you, and if you routinely give them discounts, why? You may want to re-think your motivation behind your discount philosophy.

But, you want to give your customer an incentive to return to you, or you want to reward them in some way. I suggest that you offer them FREE BATTING.

I know, you are saying, wait a minute Cindy! You don’t give discounts, but you give free batting? Yes, I do! And here is why –

Batting is tangible. Your customer KNOWS what batting is and knows what the approximate retail cost of batting. Free batting also saves your customer time by not having to stop by the quilt shop and they may be able to bring their quilt to you more quickly.

Best of all, by offering the batting FREE, your customer knows they are getting a great deal.

Note: Batting should be a separate charge and not included in the price of the quilting labor.

Here is the best part for you, the machine quilter. Free batting will cost you less than most discounts!

You need to purchase your batting wholesale or at a discount. A Warm & Natural Queen Size batting, pre-cut, wholesale is $16.30 (Price at EE Schenck, Portland, OR, May 2014.) The suggested retail price would be $32.95 +/- Prices will vary for other battings and sizes or if purchased/sold by the yard.

For a $16 (+/-) investment, you don’t loose any $$ on the quilting labor that you would charge to your customer. This means that there is more $$ in YOUR pocket!

I look forward to your comments

Machine Quilting Myth #2

Machine Quilting Myth #2
You can quilt two, three or more quilts per day!

Machine Quilting Myth #2 is a “sister” to Machine Quilting Myth #1. The reasoning goes that if it takes only an hour or two to quilt a quilt (Myth #1), than you should be able to quilt three or more quilts per day. Please, DON’T BELIEVE THIS! If you read the comments to Machine Quilting Myth #1, you will quickly realize that it takes MUCH longer than two or three hours to complete a quilt on a quilting machine. Can someone quilt more than one quilt per day?  Yes, it can be done and I have done it.

But … what is being quilted and what is the quality of the quilting.If the quilts are small, such as baby size quilts to a twin size quilt, you could do two per day, but I would think that the quilting would be more all over, edge to edge or pantograph work. Not that any of these techniques are “bad”, they are usually less time-consuming than custom work.

If the quilts are smaller and are using the same backing fabric, I’ll either put both quilts onto the quilting machine at the same time. Or,  I’ll measure, then mount the backing fabric on the machine for the two quilts, Then I’ll put the first quilt top on, quilt it, and then put the next quilt top on below the first quilt and continue quilting until finished.(Both quilts will be rolled onto the take up roller.)  If these quilts use different backings, then they need to be on the machine individually.

But other questions that this myth raises are – Do you REALLY want to be quilting more than one quilt per day? Let’s assume that the quilts are not small, but larger, maybe larger twin to king size. Do you want to be under pressure to quilt two (or more) large quilts per day? What kind of toll will be paid to your body, your mind, and your sanity if this pace is continued for a short while? Or over a long period of time? Will you have a life or time for family, friends or your community? Will you have time to complete your own quilts and projects?

I have written a short article title “How Many Quilts Can You Quilt?” It is in a pdf file and you can view it by Clicking Here  

Here are some questions for you and please post your answers as a Comment or send them directly to me at longarmu@aol.com

Have you every completed two or more quilts in one day?

If yes, what were their approximate sizes and what did you quilt on them? These answers don’t need to be specific, especially if you did this a while ago.

If you do quilt more than one quilt per day on a reasonably consistent basis, what sizes are the quilts (approximate) and what do you usually quilt on them.

Do you “group” the quilts together on one backing or do you mount each quilt individually on the quilt machine?

If you have any other comments on this topic, please post them.  I know we all learn a lot from what others have to say.