How to Price Quilts - Custom Quilt Pricing with FREE pdf

hello everyone I am Lisa with Lisa Cape in Clips I'm so glad you've joined me today we're in the office talking about one of the most frequent questions that I get asked on a weekly basis how do you charge for a quilt you've been asked to make a quilt and you're not quite sure where to start so today we're going to be talking about the economics of making a quilt we're in the office and we have a lot to talk about so let's get started I have heard from so many of you and it's kind of amazing that even though we are all different our stories always sound familiar or similar so the messages often sound like this I've been quilting for X amount of time and love to make quilts I've never made one and sold one the co-worker has asked me how much when I charged them to make a quilt and can you help me so I thought in today's video I would share with you how I have developed a system for pricing my work and just let you know that what my prices look like are going to be totally different than your pricing and we're going to go over to some of the reasons why that is in today's video you know the reality of it is is that unless you sew or you deal with fabrics or you've been a quilter and made a quilt more than likely you do not know how much material cost goes into making a quilts and you don't know how much time is involved in making that quilt and so keep that in mind when you are coming up with a pricing system for you is that most of the time your prices are gonna be a lot different than what your co-worker has in mind when they asked you that question more than likely you know most people when they think of quilts they think of the quilt they saw hanging in a cracker barrel or the quilt in a bag at Walmart that comes with shams and matching bed skirts and those are the prices that they have preconceived and it is not their fault so when there's a surprise element involved when you present your prices keep that in mind I really think that as the artist or the creator of the quilt and this really goes for any genre of skills trades and crafting across the board it is really your responsibility to educate your client into why your price is this way because most people they just don't know and certainly it can be a little bit of a sticker price shop so a brief little history about me as a quilter in case this is the first time you're joining in any of my videos I started quilting in 1999 and I am a self-taught quilter teaching myself from books that were given to me by my great aunt who was a lifetime quilter I spent years and years and years and years and really only started quilting for hire or my quilting business until let's say three years ago so what I'm going to share with you in today's video and the information I'm sharing really comes from what I've developed and it could be different from you you could modify this information but these are all things that you really should consider when pricing a quilt so with all of that preconceived things out there let's get started with how to price your quilt one of the very first things I think we need to consider when setting up a price system for your quilts is really the area in which you live we all live in different economical regions and our prices are going to look different because of that you know I could make a queen size of beautiful quilts and sell it for X amount of dollars where I live I could take that same quilt several states away and sell it easily for two or three times higher I could also take this quilt and bring it to another state away and never be able to sell that quote because it is just too expensive so the area on which we live really sets a baseline of what we can make a living at or make a quilt for so consider that one great way to find out a ballpark price range to start at would be visit some craft fairs some local markets some craft shows and get a baseline of price or a ballpark in which maybe you could start at and it might be that you have to adjust your pricing maybe your pricing is too high and you need to figure out ways to lower the cost or maybe your pricing could be raised a little it's all going to be based in the area in which we live and then we get more into the facts and numbers behind pricing our quilt now we are going to start talking about some numbers and doing a little bit of math so just to let you know and I'm going to put a close-up of what this looks like right here which might be easier to see than this I made up this PDF that just really helped me formulate a price that works for me and so all of the numbers that we're going to talk about today are adjustable to you and what you have access to and in your area you can download this PDF it's going to be in the description box of this video it just brings you over to my Dropbox and it's just a one-page PDF and so that's what we're going to use today to formulate a price and a for today's video we're going to imagine that we've been asked to make a twin size quilt so let's take the measurements of a quilt that measures 72 inches wide by 90 inches long and those are the dimensions that we're going to work together to formulate a price so go ahead download and print off one of these copies and you can follow along with us today you might even save this and be able to use it as a tool to help you in the future pricing your quilts okay we have our little sheet and we're going to work off of this side here to formulate a cost for your quilt and we're going to start talking by the fabric cost or the cost of materials that it's going to require to make this twin size quilt I'll start by saying that we're going to use a ballpark or an average pricing range for two days quilt these prices are going to vary depending on what's available to you and in in your area I am very lucky that I have a jo-ann's fabric about five minutes away from my house I have a local bookshop about 15 minutes away and I have a Walmart less than two minutes away that still carries fabrics so I have some local very quick accessible places to buy materials and we all have online where we can shop different brands and stores easily online as well so I have all of these options and certainly I have found very nice quality fabrics and materials at all three places with some experience you can certainly find quality fabrics and goods for your quilts at all different types of places and you can do that on a budget so saying that we're going to just put an average cost of fabric at $12 a yard I have found quality fabric for way less than that and I have paid way more than that for a yard of fabric but for today's video we're gonna say $12 and I don't think that that is unreasonable a price to put on a yard of fabric so let's figure out the cost of this quilt top for a quilt that measures 72 inches by 90 inches I think it is fair to say that you will need at least six yards of fabric and that's taking into consideration wasting fabric as we cut out our pieces or it could be more than six yards if we're buying multiple colors or patterns and doing a different patch work or applique you know there's so many variations but we're gonna say six yards for the top at $12 a yard that's going to give us a ballpark price of 72 dollars for the quilt top okay so 72 dollars next we'll talk about the batting it could be different but an average ballpark price for a batting for a twin size quilt would be $24.99 okay so let's say $24.99 on top of our $72 the next thing we're going to consider is the quilt backing and we're going to need at least six yards to do the back six yards at twelve dollars a yard is another seventy two dollars and then we consider the binding fabric and we'll need about five eighths of a yard to do our quilt and that gives us about nine dollars so if you add all of that up we come up to a total of material cost of a hundred and seventy seven dollars and ninety nine cents now that is not including the cost of our thread maybe we are replacing the needle maybe we're using fusible x' or interfacing all other variables that go into constructing your top or on top of the material cost the body of our quilt so those are all things that make up the material cost and so this little PDF is going to break that down for you I'm sorry I'm looking down at my sheet you got a line for the quilt top yardage a line for your batting backing binding and threat okay those are your basic things you might have to pencil in any extra things that you use to construct your quilt top so right now for this twin size quilt we are at a hundred and seventy seven dollars and ninety nine cents so what else do we need to consider in pricing this quilt so now we are at 177 dollars and 99 cents for our twin size quilts the next thing we need to consider is the quilting charge or how much is it going to cost to finish this quilt and it might be that you're going to quilt the quote yourself how much thread and needle and time is involved in that it might be that you're going to tie the quilt again how much material and time is involved and it might be that you're going to send your quilt off to a long armor and how much will you pay that person to quilt your quilt for you let's say we're going to send our twin size quilt off to a long armor and they charge 15 cents a square inch to quilt our quilt for us this is where all of our prices start to vary because that could look different depending on where you are at average price fifteen cents for our quilt brings us to ninety seven dollars and 20 cents so we're going to take that ninety seven twenty and add it to our material cost and we come up to two hundred and seventy five dollars in nineteen cents so that's where we are currently okay now we are at two hundred and seventy five dollars and 19 cents for our quilt this whole next section on the PDF we are going to skip for today's video because we could always add upgrades and there's options of ways to increase the value of what you're going to charge for your quilt you could customize your quilt you could do embroidery by machine or by hand you could add embellishments you can add quilt tags and labels and there's all different kinds of ways to increase the price of the quilt we're going to keep it simple today and we're going to skip all of those options the next thing we're going to talk about is the labor cost and again this is another subject of where it's going to start adding some differences and what I charge and what you charge when I started quilting in 99 I was very entry level and I have learned a lot to where I am now certainly I could not charge what I charge now back then at different experience levels and it's taken some confidence and some sweat equity into myself and my business to feel comfortable to charge what I charge now certainly I do not want to stay here I think we should always be growing and improving and feeling confident in our abilities as a creator to charge more so the amount we're going to charge for a labor is going to look different you know I find it interesting I did a Google search on the internet the other day and I typed in what is the average entry-level wage per hour for a skilled trade and so I'm going to be looking down here for a second but for an electronics technician the entry-level wage per hour average is 15 dollars and 88 cents for a project schedule and I'm not quite sure what that is but I sound like a project scheduler their average entry-level wage per hour is $40 an hour mind you that's where they started and they're going up from there I would love to make $40 an hour wouldn't that be awesome me you know that's my life goal is to you know find where I can to charge that if that ever happens but for today's video we're going to come in and say $15 an hour is what I'm going to charge to make this twin size quilt let's just say it's going to take me 20 hours to make this quilt again all of this is going to vary to you but 20 hours for our twin size quilt at $15 an hour is $300 for the labor cost so if we add a $300 to the 275 dollars and 19 cents of materials and quilting we come to a grand total are you ready of five hundred and seventy five dollars and 19 cents that is a lot of money that's a lot of money for a twin size quilt and that's going to sound a lot of money like a lot of money to your coworker who asked you if you could make a quilt for them because remember most on average people think of quilt pricing of the beautiful quilt they saw in Cracker Barrell that was $79 for a king-size quilt and now we're going to talk about five hundred and seventy five dollars for a twin size quilt so you can see the sticker shock and rightfully so that is a lot of money so how do you take all of these different prices and guidelines and adjust that to what works for you so that's what we're going to talk about next you so now we have formulated a simple quilt price for this twin size quilt coming up to five hundred and seventy five dollars and nineteen cents and you can see how I just wrote in the totals right there now we're going to talk about the second half of this PDF and what really worked for me because of all of the variables and we're not just talking about material cost we're talking about different sizes of quilts right we're talking about patchwork or scrappy quilts versus memory coats made out of clothing so there's all these different variables and I make a ton of t-shirt clothes matter of fact most of the quilts that I get commissioned for our t-shirt quilts now keep all of this in mind when formulating your price you might not be spending a hundred and seventy seven dollars on making the quilt top because you've been given all of these t-shirts right or clothes to cut up to put into a quilt so your material cost might be different but what are you investing in you're investing and stabilizer deboning the clothes cutting the clothes apart figuring out which parts of the clothes you're going to use and not use you're taking the time to add to stabilizer to the clothing and to cut usable pieces of fabric from these clothing so all of that needs to be considered in the pricing of your quilt so all of those variables and all the different sizes of quilts there are I needed a way for myself to be able to answer quickly when someone contacts me how much do you charge for a quilt so I went across the board and I said you know what I'm gonna make three different price guides I'm gonna start off with an easy quilt you'll see that right up here easy and all of these slots then I'm going to figure out a mid-level you know maybe they want a t-shirt quilt but they want stashing and corner stones or a border what are my fees for that and then I formulated a difficult category and this is like where my collage style quilts would come in you know the quilts that are going to take a lot more time involved a lot more thought process a lot more planning a lot more materials I went through each one of these sections to formulate a price across the board for easy well easy medium and hard quilts and so for me now when someone contacts me through facebook Messenger and says can you make a full-size a t-shirt quilt for me what is your price I like to be able to respond to that customer quickly and give them a ballpark of course there's things that you could do to upgrade that price but let's give them a ballpark figure and respond to the client in a timely manner so what you'll find on this section of the PDF is a graph where you can map out your entry-level quilt prices for each size that you want to offer and it may be break your quilts up to easy mid level and difficult and maybe that will help you out in determining a prices for your quilts now if you have any questions at any time I'm always here to try to help you and again our prices are going to be different and I certainly wish that there was someone out there that could have helped me three years ago when I was trying to formulate my prices but it's really trial and error and one thing that you're going to notice is that you're going to be asked a lot if you decide to go into making clothes for on Commission what your prices are I give out price so you know I get a lot of inquiries about making quilts and once they hear my price I don't hear back from about 95% of them I feel bad but I also feel like that's okay there are several quilters in my area and I feel like there's enough quilting work to go around to all of us and my prices might might be higher or might be lower than the other quilters in my area but I'm doing what works for me and what can sustain my small little business certainly if you do the math and the method that I showed you today adding up your cost and your labor and and different things like that and keeping in mind your economics of the area that you live in it won't take you long to figure out that to make a very cookie living and making quilts you're gonna have to make quite a few quilts in a month and how many quilts can you make in a month and how much time is involved how much time do you have to invest in that and so those are all things to consider when you go to think about making quilts on Commission now I hope that I have not been too confusing the five hundred and seventy-five dollars for a twin sized quilt sounds ginormous to me but how much is your skills really worth and to some people that's a lot of money and you might not ever get that quote commissioned and to some other people after telling them about all the materials and time involved and skills that it takes to make that quilt they're going to appreciate all of that and have no problem paying five hundred and seventy five dollars for an investment in you and a-one of kind crafted handcrafted piece from you so again if you have any questions I'd love to help you can join me on Facebook I'll put a link to my facebook below it's Lisa Capon quilts and through there I have a really fun group of people and we share everything from quilting to journaling all kinds of different genres of crafting and creating and so I would love it if you join me there as well and I'll put a link up to my Etsy shop if you are interested in any patterns journal kids journals I have a lot of fun different things over there that you can check out and that link will be in the description box as well I hope that I did not make this too confusing and again all of this is going to be different based on where you live and your skills and equipment that you have so many variables and so that is why if you have asked me in the past if I could help you with their price my answer has been long-winded and at the end I did not give you a price to quote because your price is going to be different than mine okay I am off to head out to the shop to start sewing and I hope you have a fantastic day if you have not already subscribed I would love to have you join along in my quilting journey and I feel like we have come together to form an awesome community not only here on YouTube but over on Facebook as well and I would love to hear from you so say hello bye everybody

Channel: Lisa Capen Quilts

Views: 70,127

Keywords: pricing quilts to sell, quiltonomics, how to price your quilts, how to price quilts, pricing customer quilts, how to price your work, the cost of making a quilt, quilt costs, quilt commission, making and selling quilts, lisa capen, lisa capen quilts

Id: _GXNZTSFy8w

Length: 27min 26sec (1646 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 28 2018