(Okay, this is what wouldnt show up earlier) I wish I could share the thread of a conversation on one of the quilting boards I belong to, but I cant. I want to take this opportunity to provide a PSA to non-quilters about the value of our (quilters) work. It seems most non-quilters perceive what we do along the value lines of whats available in the retail market at places like Target and Walmart. A----HEM. ALL of us do it because we love it. MOST of us gift our creations, as most of us know, all too painfully, that the market will not bear the true cost of our labors. Many of us have been asked to make quilts for people we know, and when we struggle with what to tell them, not wanting to undervalue the bare minimum of whats involved, and then finally tell them something between what they want to hear and the truth, they walk away. I want to extend some information to help educate the non-quilting public about whats involved in the creation of our craft. Let me provide an illustration of what it might cost to produce one of these marvelous creations: the average cost of fabric for a quilt is somewhere in the neighborhood of $10-12.00 a yard. (Most of the time, these kinds of fabrics dont go on sale, at least not into deep discounts.) It usually takes about 6-8 yards of fabric to make a fairly ordinary quilt top -- and by ordinary, I mean not paper-pieced, or appliqued, or any fancy blocks or stuff like that (Id say queen-size down to twin) PLUS the same yardage to put a backing on it. In between the backing and the pieced quilt top is batting, which retails for about $15.00 a yard. Most quilts take at least 2-1/2 yards of batting. Im just going to be liberal for a moment here, and round everything up. So, on materials alone, not counting electricity to run your machine, and thread, or maintenance on your machine which grinds away for hours to produce the wonderful work we do, for the average quilt, you are talking about roughly $250.00 JUST for materials. Now, thats just the stuff that goes together into making a quilt. See, theres this really cool thing called QUILTING -- thats the stitching that goes on the top of the quilt, and actually joins all three layers of your quilt into a final work of art. I have always done my own -- either on my machine at home, or by renting a long-arm machine at a local quilt shop (and I PAY for the rent, usually $25.00 an hour -- oh, and I had to take a class to do that, which cost $150.00 before I could have the privilege of renting it -- but then the labor is mine, Im not paying somebody to DO it, and the longest time it took me to rent to do one was 4 hours, so that rental was $100.00. And btw, thats a computer-driven machine. I pick the design, tell it how big the quilt is, start and stop it, and the machine just does its thing. Not too much of me involved.). I dont know what exactly the going rate is for a long-armer to do a quilt, it depends on the design, whether its a consistent design that goes ALL over the quilt, or whether the stitching is customized to the quilt blocks themselves -- thats very spendy, as it takes a lot of extra time and attention to do it. But, I wouldnt be surprised if the low-end of average for this is around $250.00. So, just with those two things involved, youve got a piece of art that on materials and SOME labor, has $500 put into it. Now. The matter of labor. None of the quilts Ive given away were quick sews. Id say that some have taken a huge amount of time, and some have taken less...but for the sake of debate, Im going to say I spend about 60-80 hours on an average quilt, including cutting, sewing, pressing, and finishing. Lets pretend Im only worth $10.00 an hour on the labor market. Thats another $600.00 - $800.00 in labor. So, the average value of one of my ordinary creations? $1,100.00 - $1,300.00. Anyone wanna buy one? Yeah. EXACTLY. THIS is why we dont sell quilts. No one wants to pay us what theyre WORTH. And btw, my labor value is much greater than $10.00 an hour. An unskilled laborer can get more than $10.00 an hour. I am sharing this with you to educate, enlighten, and perhaps, spread the word for myself and my fellow quilters whose work is often severely undervalued. Call it my crusade. For now. Oh, yeah, and here are a few pix of my ordinary creations (pix omitted from re-post). I use the quotes because I have also seen far too many talented quilt artists demean their work. I think virtually everything I see is an amazing masterpiece. Many are not to my personal tastes, but the craftsmanship that goes into them is amazing, awesome, and inspiring. And I want to stand on the rooftops and shout it out...for ALL us quilters. And if any of you DO want to pay market value for one of these works of art, please PM me. I love doing them. Im running out of people to give them to, and I honestly cant afford to keep doing it if I have to GIVE them all away!
Posted on: Mon, 03 Nov 2014 00:10:57 +0000
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