In all the quilting I've done, I've never made a quilt for myself. The first quilt I made, I didn't really make. The top was made long before I acquired it. It may have been made by an ancestor (Great Grandmother) but more probably was picked up at a garage sale in the 70's, maybe before. Long ago I added the interior and a back to it, but it was all experimental.
I've also never sold a quilt. There are lots of reasons for this. One is that I don't have a "quilting machine" to do the fancy top stitching, mine is more a variation of stitching in the ditch. Doesn't make it less valuable, but many have specific expectations, and my 'feathers' were never going to set the world on fire. The funny thing is, if I owned a quilting machine, the cost of a quilt would go up, exponentially!
It takes two weeks to make a quilt. They take 100-120 hours for a full-sized quilt. When I get started, I'm often working 10 hour days, measuring, cutting, sewing, filling, sewing, thinking, sewing... I get bored and take breaks, but even those are short, as I feel guilty for not getting this done, and on to the next thing (not necessarily sewing or quilting.) And while I feel a sense of accomplishment when they are done, and think most of them are beautiful, I usually feel like I could have done better. Maybe some of the seams weren't exactly correct because I was day dreaming, or the pieces were cut a thread over or shy of exact. I'm not talking big mistakes, those I usually dig out and do over, if they happen. I'm talking small, even tiny, mistakes. But I feel them all. The backs are my biggest issue. After wrestling all those heavy layers around my sewing machine to get the quilting done, there are area's that don't always lay flat enough for my liking.
I like to design, to choose the colors, to decide how I want it to look and how to get there. I like seeing it come together, though I am frequently 'done' with it before it's finished. I've made over a hundred, 35 of those going to Veteran's, the rest going to family and a few friends. One day I will make one for me, and keep it.
But back to selling them. When you think about the cost of materials, the time in searching out and finding the right pattern (usually just a photo of something that I can then create the pattern for) the actual time making it, the blood, sweat and tears that go into each and every one of them, putting a price on one is very, very hard. When burger flippers are making $15 plus and hour to stand and flip burgers over, without skill, experience, thought or abilities, what is an hour worth for someone using all those? Creating something totally unique, a one-of-a-kind art piece? See the difficulty? At $1000 a piece, it's just over $8 an hour, when you have to figure in 4.5-5 yards each for the three layers of the quilt (15 yards of fabric at $12 a yard is about $180.) And how do you measure the value for the creativity? It just isn't easy. I think that it's worth a lot more than what a burger flipper, fry cook, retail worker or many other folks make. While a hamburger can be a work of art, they usually aren't, and don't even come up to 'a good hamburger' status. So, $2,000 a piece, and I am up to what a burger flipper makes. $3,000? More? And then I would feel guilty for charging so much, even though, it's what the work alone is worth, if not the value of the art.
Someone mentioned that I was 'just giving them away to veterans, people I often didn't even know, for free.' And that's true. I do that, in honor of my cousin, who lived with us for awhile when I was growing up, and felt like a big brother. And because I didn't have to face what those people have, to make the decisions that they have to live with. So, they did 'pay for them' just not with cash. Sort of a 'quid pro quo'.
So, I may never sell one, but the people who have them should know the value of what they have been gifted. And hopefully, it makes them feel like it and they are worth much, much more.
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