On Quilting

 

In late February of 2006, while pregnant with my son, I signed up for a beginner's quilting class at a local quilt shop. My husband told me about the shop and found out about the class. I'm not sure, but I think it may have been my birthday gift that year. Little did my husband know what would happen after that first class.

I finished my first quilt about three weeks before my son was due (Originally July 2nd, born on July 9th). It was a quilt for my daughter who immediately took a liking to it. I was unable to work on anything else until the beginning of 2007. That year, I made eleven quilts. In 2008, I made twelve. I have decided to slow down for 2009, but have still already made several quilts by mid July.

I had wanted to learn to sew at quite a young age. My mother didn't really sew and my grandmother hadn't sewn for years by that point in time. Quilting seems to have taken that desire and it has blossomed. While there are certain aspects of quilting that I don't particularly enjoy (such as cutting), I do enjoy it overall. If you would like me to make you a quilt, feel free to email me and we can discuss pricing.

Below I have included a post I wrote on March 24, 2007. Information in this can also be applied to any other craft. When you wish someone to make you something or you hesitate at paying a certain price for a quilt or another crafted item, please read this article. Perhaps it will help explain why people charge what they do for handmade items. I may update this article in the future.

 

Before I started to quilt, I had no idea what was involved. I always wondered why quilts cost so much and thought they were overpriced. No longer. Below are a list of reasons as to why quilts (and I don't mean automatic machine assembly line made ones with no care put into them) cost so much.

1. Fabric: Fabric is expensive. Some might point me to Walmart and say 'Walmart has fabric for cheap'. There are two problems with this.

First, you pay for what you get. Cheap fabric has a lower thread count and wears out much more easily than higher quality, more expensive fabric. If I make a quilt and am going to sell it, it's going to be made with good, quality products, not some shoddy stuff I got off the dollar rack. Not only that, working with cheap fabric is the pits. I hate doing it. It just doesn't do as well as high quality fabrics.

Second, places like Walmart are closing down their fabric sections. In Texas, at least, all the Walmarts, save one, within an hour drive of us are getting rid of all their fabrics. They will have notions, but no fabric. Hancock Fabrics are also closing many stores around here, and the JoAnn's we have here is just...ghetto.

2. Thread: Like fabric, it's best to get a good quality thread. I started off using a cheap thread and I had more problems with that thread breaking. I was about ready to throw things at the machine before I found out it was the thread not the machine, causing the problem. Then, some of the cheap thread got stuck in my machine because it broke, causing problems. Cheap thread, like cheap fabric, just isn't going to last. As I said before, if I make a quilt, it's going to be done with quality materials.

3. Batting: I'm not going to repeat what I've already said about quality materials. Sure, there's cheap stuff, but you get what you pay for.

4. Time: I had no idea exactly how much time was put into making a quilt. Just making a crib sized quilt, well, I don't know if I could even do that in a day, unless it was an extremely, extremely simple pattern.

First you have to cut out all the pieces that you're going to sew together. If you have small pieces, this is going to add to the time. Once you have the pieces cut, then you sew. Many times, you have to trim in between sewing. Once you get certain pieces put together into blocks, then you sew the blocks together.

To do a quilt properly, you need to take the time to make sure that you're not doing bigger seams than you're supposed to do. You have to try and get the seams to match up. This is more difficult than it sounds. One has to be very precise! I'm still working on this!

All this take a LOT of time. Let's say a quilt takes me 30 hours. At 10 dollars an hour, that's 300 dollars. That's just paying for my time, much less the money I paid for the materials.

This also isn't taking into account the money that is paid for the tools to aid in the quilting process. I wish I could accurately give the impression of how much time it really takes to do a quilt, but I can't.

So, that's why quilts (good, made by a person not a robot) quilts cost so much.