Business Advice for Longarm Quilters (The Latest Thread)

[Music] hi and welcome to another episode of the latest thread so today we were thinking about talking business some business related topics um this will pertain to people that are maybe thinking about starting a long-arm business and um most of us have been in business for quite some time some of us are no longer quilting for others but most of us still are so the first topic we're going to talk about communication with the customers because that is super important because they made a beautiful quilt or special quilt and we have to figure out how we can enhance that quilt top that they made with quilting and it's i find it really tricky especially if it's a new customer to me because i have to before i even get to the quilting design part i kind of have to figure out what it is who they are you know aside from the fact that i want to find out you know how they want to use the quilt once it's finished but i'd like to know a little bit about their personality because you know that tells me you know how they see their quilt to be finished because a lot of customers tell me anyhow oh i have no idea you know you're the professional and you can take that two ways either yes they're gonna have a lot of confidence in what i'm gonna do with their quilt or number two they wanna test me to see what what do i even know what i'm doing or they simply have no idea what they want because their their goal and you know their fun part is making the quilt and they have no idea so i have to in order to advise them you know learn more about them because if you're not on the same page you know the result can be devastating it may not be a return customer so you know in that regard to sum it up you know i i just want to learn more about them before i even consider giving them options so anyone else that's a good uh good way to to do that is to learn more about them as a person in like social media such a valuable tool right we can creep their pages no i'm serious you can look at their instagram um pages if they're a public page you can look and if you have to friend them then you wait for them to give you the blessing on that but um you can get that kind of feel for who they are and their style by looking at some of their work and possibly some of the other quilting things that they've shared over a period of time so that's a good idea too that's a good idea by depending on where you're located like i'm looking at my clientele you know and not so much on social media right as you know they're they're older not that older people can't be on social media but you know it really makes a difference you know where you're located and who your client tell is going to be yeah oh good yeah so i i mean i think a lot of times customers think they know what they want you know and then you have to you know some people you can tell right away if you're gonna be able to change their mind because maybe you know that that's not the best choice you know like maybe you're not gonna see the quilting at all and i know this and you're just gonna pay more money for something that you're still not going to be able to see you know and but then i have some other people who like one lady in particular she's just a feather lady so she doesn't care what you do as long as it involves feathers she's good it can be an all-over feather if it works or it could be you know custom but it just has to be feathers so i think it's really good the longer that you do it you know in the beginning i would meet with people and they want this here and that there and it was like oh i don't like this at all so it didn't take too long before they started to just give them to me and i know a lot of people say they hate when someone gives them a quilt and says do whatever you think but i loved it and still to this day that's pretty much all i do so they give me the quilt i'll tell them what i'm thinking and you know it's worked out well mostly one time not she told me to do whatever i wanted and i got a phone call and it's this lady and i'm like oh she's going to tell me how much she loves it and she's like i hate this quilt no what and she said i said well you told me to do whatever i wanted what i thought would work and that's what i did and she said but i didn't think you'd do that and it was like no and i didn't refund her i didn't you explicitly told me to do what i thought and that is what i did so you know it's i don't know i like when they tell you to do what you think as opposed to wanting to point out every design well yeah when they do that to me like when they say i want this here and i want this it like takes my creativity just chops it like no thoughts on this now i'm like a robot quilting at that point and it doesn't come through and your quilting is like you're at your best in that and you it just it kills the creativity it definitely does but you know uh i found too that you know maybe not with the brand new person but for someone that you've quilted for a while and you for and you know their general you know likes and dislikes i think you can plan it out and i do appreciate their input to some extent but i usually tell them you know we can audition all we want but sometimes as you see it coming to life i i tell them i you know i've changed my mind in that area because i really felt that what i decided to do instead you know would work much better and they're usually okay um but to jody's point too i just thought about you know for for the customer that didn't like it you know if they give input i usually or even if you just have conversation i make some sort of notation you know on on the work order sheet i just use you know printable work order sheet and i make notations on that you know so there is no misunderstanding you know you are always stick to it as i just mentioned not always but you know usually it works out just fine but aside from communication i think writing down what you're discussing is equally important because you know i don't know about you guys but i generally have them sign the work order or at least acknowledge of some sort that that's what we talked about so because no i don't want to refund either or rebound for them no way yeah well i will say to with that particular woman you know there are i think we all want to say that quilters are not really nice people and we i think we all are mostly but this particular woman um you know i think it's good to network with your fellow long armors whether they're just in your area or whatever because i told another quilter in my area about it and she right away said what is her name so it turned out that this was this lady's game so she tried every long-arm quilter and then she would try to not pay so yeah luckily those are a whole different problem that's a whole different problem yeah yeah i think there's a level of trust that they have to have for us in first though i mean it's like um my first career was as a hairdresser i got my hairdressing license and you know not many people would come in and say just do whatever you want right you got to walk around with that on your head for the next at least six weeks right so i think it's kind of the same thing where people need to look at our work previously in in order to say i like that person's style uh in order to trust them enough to say do whatever you think they they have to do their homework on us as well yeah and the one armor that they've chosen otherwise of the first few clients first few times yes consultation consultation but after you develop that kind of relationship and that rapport and the trust and you kind of be like okay they drop it off and say just do whatever yeah we love that but i think it takes them a while sometimes those are precious creations of theirs right okay yeah you know and and also you know aside from the fact that the times have changed due to the corona virus but before then i do prefer to meet people in person for the simple fact that we also have to try to protect ourselves as long arm quilters and business people because if you um if if you are able to look over a quilt with them right there you know and there are some issues you know with the quilt whatever it may be you know it's a lot easier to address that than if you're just you know like right now maybe hand in the back or you know the quilts left on your front porch you know with the social distancing but i do prefer if possible to have the the quilt you know they're with them to look at you know because we have to protect ourselves also like 90 i want to say like 90 of my customers just shipped their quotes to me so most of my consultations are done with photos and emails you know you can't see the the fluff in most photos so yeah there's there's still phone consults after that so so you know drop off and pick up hasn't changed greatly over here you know with most of my stuff coming by ups anyway yeah i in the very beginning i would you know have them come over but i very quickly put an end to that because they come over a lot of them and they bring their two girlfriends or they bring their husband and who that's fine but it goes from a drop off and let's talk about it too they've been there for two hours and now we're just want to see how the machine work you know it becomes like i could have done another quilt in the time that they were there and i'm not charging them for that time so it really got to be too much for me so i switched to i'll meet you in a quilt shop i will meet you mostly my favorite is to just meet them in a parking lot somewhere because it makes it uncomfortable yeah you know if they have ideas they'll tell me i'll tell them what i think i can peek in the bag and see what it is otherwise i just take it home and i look at it and then i tell them what i think so it just you know it's it's a tricky thing and like if you have a dog you know so now if they're gonna come to your house you have to worry about putting the dog away and it just for me was like oh my gosh no it's it's just too much i had some of them love to see the dogs though well like i had a lady come and she brought her husband and i'm talking with her and i looked over and he's not in the studio anymore i'm like excuse me he goes oh what's over here he was like all the way through my family room just walking through my house and i'm like oh no no no this is not going to work just wandering i think when it comes to that you know we we have our own preferences you know um some of them are maybe more per of us are more particular for whatever reason you know or maybe whether you know some things work better for for us than some other things but i don't know i just like to be sure that that's what you know they want and i want them to look at it with me it doesn't mean it's easy if you see it's a total crappy quilt and they think you know it's going to go to paducah or somewhere i mean you get that quite a bit and you know but it's you have to be tactful but i still think it's easier you know that yeah i know that can be difficult i i can't be taxable it's like i can't see that now it's hard but but you know i just prefer to do that in person because our business for the most part is mouth mouth by mouth you know referral business you know or at least it used to be for me you know and so i in my opinion have a ton of long arm quilters and at this particular time i'm not worried about you know not having enough business uh because you know cut back some of the customer quilting but still you know i still don't want negative feedback to affect my reputation as a business owner so therefore i'm gonna do what works best for me to ensure that you know i handle it as professional as they possibly can well i think we're gonna take a break and then when we come back we're gonna talk about how we audition these signs and you know stuff like that we'll see what we come up with so see you in a bit hi guys karen marchetti here we are in gamel studio and we are going to have a bunch of fun today okay i would love to share with you guys today um the my stitch feature on the vision 2 because it is my favorite feature my stitch presets are right here you have two options and we right now are going to set the first one to regulate 13 stitches per inch so i just press and hold now it's programmed and the other one i would like to change constant 35 so then we're going to press and hold number two um i have programmed these to the a button so whenever i press the a button it's going to on the fly switch between those two stitches and um i'll show you in a minute i'll share a couple other options that you can use that for but right now i want to share how i do ruler work and constant work together okay so i've brought up my bobbin thread and i am in regulated mode with the ruler because i have to be in regulated mode when i have a ruler because i have to pay attention so as i press the my stitch now i am immediately in constant mode press it again and i'm right back into regulated there's no stopping there's no starting it just on the fly changes that is my very favorite feature okay another thing about the my stitch select i based all my quilts so what i'm going to do is switch this to baste take a quarter inch program one and then i'm going to take my base up to three inches and program the other button this way when i'm basting i can easily switch between the two when i press the my stitch i'm at a quarter inch for my edges and my and my top i'm at three inches for when i baste across makes it very easy to do the last reason i really like the my stitch is because when i stitch my feathers i am in say constant about 50 to 60 percent motor and then when i do my fills i'm at about 35 motor okay so let me show you how on the fly we can switch between those two speeds okay so when i stitch my feathers i'm going to be in a constant between 50 and 60 is my comfort zone so we're at 56 right now so i just start stitching and i'm doing my feathers and life is wonderful and without having to even change size speed i just press the my stitch preset and now i'm at 35 motor for a nice small fill so then after i do my fill we hit the the my stitch preset again and i'm right back to 50 motor so no time is wasted in having to change your stitch speed or your stitch length and it makes life a lot easier okay we are back we're back from break so the next topic we want to address is how do we audition the design so um we were just saying well they can't see in our head so we have to kind of let out what is in our head in regards to our suggestions so they understand what we have in mind um i think one of the things we also need to consider is you know the budget because we shouldn't be able to just offer one option you know the high-end option which i think most of us a lot of times we prefer to do an edge stretch if at all possible because you know frankly you know you make your money quickly more quickly than with the custom and not all quilts warrant custom work you know do we do in the end what the customer wants sure probably most of us but that doesn't mean we can't steer them in a direction so therefore we got to be able to offer different options so anyone i'll go um if it's an edge to edge it's simple because they like they say and i always say trains i don't know why but if they want trains i'm gonna show them the different train designs i have and i don't know why i go to trains all the time but you know like that makes it a little easier then it's just you know the density of the the design how you know large or small you're gonna do it but on on custom quilts i almost always draw it right on a picture of the quilt and not like i may do one corner as a a quick custom and the other corner as a full-blown heirloom custom and then give them the option to do this one's this much and to do all this it's this much but we can always land somewhere in the middle you know so so you said that you have your quilt shipped so in other words you know um you ask for a picture of the quilt before you even accept the job uh and then you can obviously print it out um i've also learned the hard way because a lot of times because i have people come to the house with their quilt if i have a brain cramp that day i might not be able to think of anything i'm just not there in my head i'm not in a good place to come up with different quilting designs so i do ask them to also email or text me a picture that gives me the opportunity before they come over you know to have you know something ready you know because to me there's nothing worse than if you're just stuttering and stumbling about and can't i mean it happens at least to me i don't know you probably all can think of something but i sometimes can't so that's another way for me to be prepared and printed out as well and they can draw on it your or even if they tell you the pat like if it's a patterned quilt they tell you the pattern name and you'll google it and look at it and get a visual idea and then they bring it's got five extra borders but you know yeah i think that that can be really challenging to draw it all ahead of time on a piece of paper i find that whenever i've done that because it's not to the same scale as the quilt itself then i get to the quilt and i have to change things it's always like that it's never exact yeah yeah and and i the way i'd like to quilt is just a very organic i know one thing i want to do and i do that and then it leads me to something else i find it really hard to commit to saying this is exactly how i'm going to quilt everything so with a customer um there may be some things that i say okay tell me something that you really love and maybe tell me something that you really don't want to have on your quilt because i have customers that don't like feathers doesn't matter what it is just don't put the opposite of yours jody yeah so just give me some kind of parameters and like or have them look through some of your um social media posts that you've already done and get an idea of some of the styles that they like or the density of quilting that they like yeah um but yeah i have a really hard time making a plan and sticking to that i'm with you sharon i kind of have the same like i can't commit to that because i don't know and i mean i could have their quote for a month and i could look at it and then i'll think of something and i might pull it out again and look at it and now what i think i want to do is totally different so for me i i love the fact that most almost always i mean they just tell me to do what i think because i don't want to you know have to draw it out and then i don't want to do it now and then i have to do it if i tell them that's what i'm doing a lot of times with new quilters they don't know what there is they don't know the quilting designs and we'll say oh i could do this over here they don't even know what that is yeah or they think they just want um i don't know an all-over meander type of thing and i'm like but i can do this all over that's prettier than meander but that's all that they've seen so they don't know you know i think it costs more to have something other than a meander yeah sure and you know feathers are faster than a meander so you know i like kind of not having a set plan so what's on there and i'm looking at it do you ever find that you have an idea rolling around in your head for some sort of design and whatever the next quilt up gets that i'm gonna find some way to take that idea rolling around and make it suit that quilt somehow yeah then that's when you really get to enjoy the creativity of the process right and it well like that i always have a plan and two-thirds through the quilt i'm like i should have done this like i have this brilliant idea so now i have to do i will i do it for myself i'll do a whole new drawing because i get a lot of the repeat quilts like they'll say oh i saw this coat can you do this one so now i have a really good idea for next time so yeah do you do them all i do them all differently whenever whenever i do some for a shop that they have the block of the month or a program and i get like 18 of the same quilt and i have to do that i want this exactly like hers and i'm like yeah but you added a sashing here it can't no matter what i do i have to go the sashing interferes with that design so yeah my biggest that's a tip you know so if you quilt my biggest nightmare was this one quilt shop where they asked me to do the shop sample for the block of the month and i'm you know obviously so it's going to hang in the shop so i did it really super nice now every single person wanted it just like that and it was like what no i don't want to do that on all of these um but the bonus was that you know after i did about four or five it was like nothing i could get them done in record time because it was just like you were on auto quilt so what's your number that drives you nuts like if i get the same quote three times i'm good that fourth one i'm like that's it the fourth one is the number that breaks me yeah yeah i'd agree and want it and that's why point two you know if you have a certain style and they like that style no matter how time-consuming like with that redwork quilt that was working on you know oh i want your fill great [Laughter] you know you know so if you have a certain style and it doesn't matter if it's maybe more costly because clearly that's more time consuming to quilt you know but that's what they want so it's the same thing whether it's a shop sample you know you kind of get a reputation you know for a certain style and then you have to be willing to do that um i posted uh a quilt uh it was a baby quilt it was a panel not too long ago for my new granddaughter and it was also like a fill and somebody um said can you tell me where you got that panel sure and then can you quilt it exactly like that no beautiful though no that's i i didn't you know doing that that's the elephant one yeah yeah it was really cute yeah but it's for special little girls special same ideas use them in different ways right you don't always have to do it exactly but you can say okay you want feathers and pebbles and swirls but maybe i can combine them in a different way so you still get that overall feel that they like but it's not identical yeah so additionally designs you know that can be tricky especially you know i mean it's tricky if they um want to mail the quilt but they still want to have input you know on the edge to edge design so then it's more time consuming for you um because i can't ask them to browse all the websites to you know see what they like so i have to browse you know and then at least send them four or five different you know images of what i think might work you know and then if they don't like it i have to start over especially i just had to do that for someone i had never quilted before so i did not know what they liked you know the world that they had made you had a lot of options you know so that part can become more time consuming for you but do you charge for that i mean that's a lot of time are you are you like charging a research consultation i i have a customer that sends me pictures of someone else's quilting constantly it's a fairly well-known person you know the the name that they and i said maybe you should get them to here is my website with all of my styles all of my quilting all of my kind of you know and now i want it just like this i'm like well that's not how i quilt you know so that that gets hard but yet but you should definitely be charging a design research fee or something that's that's your time and effort yeah well i've had people too karen where they you know they make a a quilt in a book is usually it you know or else they'll say i'm going to send the pattern picture in with the quilt because you know the i want it quilted how it's quilted at one that always stands out to me is years and years ago um this lady sent me a quilt and it was those it's supposed to look like cross stitching it's an eleanor burns quilt and it was little two inch squares or something it was the entire quilt and she wanted it quoted just like the book which was easy enough cross hatching well at that time i despised ruler work i was not doing this and so i mean i had absolutely no problem because the quilter who quilted all of her quilts is a friend of mine and was very close in distance to me and i said please call her i'm sure she would love you know so sometimes like if if it's just not me this just isn't no i have no problem please take it to someone else and usually that particular woman i've quilted for for years because she actually wrote me a letter and said thank you so much i got exactly what i wanted and i appreciate that you were willing to send me where i needed to go to get what i wanted and she brought everything else to me after so it was great because i didn't want to oh my gosh the thought of cross hatching a queen size quote no i've done that yeah i'll give you a list of 10 other long armors that will gladly cross hatch for you i will not yeah i mean now i would take it in a second but then no no i still hate full cross-hatching oh yeah a little tiny cross hatching sure and that's a good point though you know again depending on what area you're in and what your uh customers make a lot of times this style is not necessarily what you want to quilt which sometimes it's you know it's good if they give you free reign because then you kind of can you know because i believe in kind of keeping it to the feel of the quilt like if it's a reproduction i want to stay in that time period with the quilting designs but if they give me free rein and i absolutely don't like the quilt you know i can incorporate something that i enjoy quilting in it so i can get over it but i find that it takes me a lot longer to jump into getting that quilt quilted you know because it's just not my thing but you know i think that shows in your quilting too though if you're not like into the design i don't think your quilting sings as much as when you're happy in quilting or it's your own style well i usually find that i'm okay once i get started because then you know it's a job i start here i finish here i don't i don't necessarily want to say it wouldn't get the same intention than something i love but it's just harder emotionally to get into it because you know we i think most of us um don't look at this necessarily as a job job like if you're stamping out parts in the factory you know there is a you know emotional thing like you know your creativity is part and it you invest something of yourself in into that world you know so but you know some of them are just more inspiring than others sorry jody well i think some there's a little bit of a flip depending on you know if you've been quilting for a really long time for other people you have to be really careful because that that um it can cause burnout which is awful because it's like and i've had it two times in 20 some years and the first time wasn't so bad i just took a break i made a quilt for myself and that cured it like i got to do my thing and okay now i can do these other things but the what the second time was i just felt like because if you're getting quilt after quilt after quilt that isn't something in it that you enjoy or you know they want a quilted ways that aren't yes i knew this but it just is so killing me and you can start to feel like your creativity is just like being squashed like i am not having out of your problem at all so it's a really that's why i think it's super important you have to take breaks and do things for yourself to kind of keep that in check sometimes and that's a really hard thing to learn it was for me anyhow you know because you know i was building a business you know some years ago and um i never got over the fear that it can end at any time if i don't just do what is expected to me you know to the point where i'm still quilting customer quilts on christmas eve instead of doing christmas eve things you know i mean that was a long time ago but i was so afraid because the the type of business that we're in you know that it can end at any time and you know most of us do that partly because we have to earn a living that's one of the reasons we do that but that's with everything everything can end at any given time right but initially that was my biggest fear and and i would my husband said you don't mark yourself time off on the calendar where you do like jody said something for yourself and i did do that however then people called and all of a sudden that week was gone because i filled it in with custom well you gave away your own time and that's right and that was a that's why i said that was a really hard lesson for me to learn i've learned it well now but you know because you're right you get to a burnout point you really do and then you almost get you can get to the point where you resent the phone ringing and another quilt you know honestly don't want to get to that i did get to that point you know and i told my husband i need to take a break period you know because there was other things we were doing with the educator thing and you know it was a great opportunity to not have to worry about coming home from trips and having these quilts sitting there you know and now i'm gradually taking them in again but it's at my on my terms you know i've i've said this before like after i do a big giant custom quilt you know it's been on my frame three weeks i throw up fabric i don't care what it is and i just play i get back to that creative just play it's you know i call it recess but it you need that you need what keeps you inspired to keep doing what you want to do you know what i mean we have to have that yeah so we all have different thoughts on that [Music] okay i think that's it for today i hope you enjoyed our topics i enjoyed sitting around with everyone and having a good conversation so and please don't forget we are still waiting to get you guys's input on the um facebook groups remember we're looking for a hashtag the latest threat because you know we want to address what interests everybody else and so leave your your comments or your feedback and suggestions on the facebook groups and we'll see you next time bye [Music] [Applause] yes [Music] [Applause] you

Channel: Gammill Quilting

Views: 849

Rating: 5 out of 5

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Id: 391hpBuDHBM

Length: 40min 36sec (2436 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 05 2021