The Business of Machine Quilting | Live Chat with Angela Walters

hey everybody it's me angela welcome to this week's live chat i'm so excited you can join me for another thursday for those of you that were commenting on the chat this is your first time making it live i'm so glad you're here and if you've stumbled across this i'm basically every thursday at three o'clock and central time i come and hang out and talk about some kind of topic related to quilting and then answer questions live it's just a way for me to connect and it kind of came out of our free motion challenge quilting alongs that we do but then it's kind of evolved into its own things so it's definitely fun to get on early and chat with everybody through text or typing and then of course to talk about a topic and of course we have giveaways and all sorts of fun stuff so this week's topic is going to be just slightly different because we're going to be talking about the business of long arm or machine quilting but for those of you that are like no thanks don't want to do that um hopefully it can just be an encouraging story about how even a blind squirrel finds a nut sometimes when you hear about how this all came about from a person that failed the sewing machine test twice in homeek true story how i became that from that person became known for machine quilting it's kind of funny and so hopefully if nothing else you'll be engaged in a funny story but definitely a little bit different than what we normally talk about normally it's more practical related or you know technical related but this one's just a little this was a little fun thing but real quick before we get into the story i just want to let you know that the weekly winner for this last week's giveaway for the t-shirt it's already been picked it was amy amy osmondson she's already been notified she's super excited and this week i'm giving away a scraptastic pattern in a scrap bag now to enter the giveaway all you have to do is after the video is over or the live chat just click the description box below and there's a link and it takes you to a place where you can type in your name and email makes it super easy for me to pick who wins and i'll announce the winner next week so very fun um really excited to tell you i have next month's live chat scheduled so usually i would just kind of pick one every week but i realize that was getting hard for people to keep track of when to come in and when not to so the next four weeks of live chats have been picked and figured out so february 11th i'll be going over tension troubleshooting any issues you're having with thread tension needle problems will be i'll give you some tips to look into that i think that should be a really informative chat i've had i've had my share of tension issues so i can definitely speak to that um the 18th of february we'll be talking about swirls how to get those round swirls tips for you know making those designs look really nice the 25th i'll be talking about my favorite marking tools my favorite ways that i have marked quills in the past or that you might find marking a little easier and then march 4th i'll be talking about thread painting super excited about that one i'll just show you some samples and talk about how you can you know add a little bit more quilting on top of your quilting to give it even more of a cool look so looking forward to all of those and if you're not sure where to find them they're always on my youtube channel so make sure you subscribe or you can also find them on my website quilting is my therapy so i have them each listed as an event underneath so you can find that as well i hope you will consider joining me but you know even if you can't make it live you can definitely watch them after the fact because they stay on my youtube channel afterwards so if you can't make it live some people work totally understand no worries you can always catch them later so hopefully you will do that all right without any further ado i'll do my little presentation of course i got my slide show or my pictures to share but i'll also try to look back at the chat and see if there's any live questions that come in um and if there is something i think that's pretty pertinent to what i'm talking about i'll try to address it but i also have a list of questions that people were asking beforehand um that when we were chatting so definitely fun stuff to go over all right so let's look at the slideshow first of all not related to the topic if you haven't caught the first episode of the second season of midnight quilter that came out yesterday it was the scraptastic quilt for those of you that don't know what midnight quilter is it's a um it's a tutorial fun video where i make a quilt start to finish and it's supposed to be kind of entertaining and kind of informative a little bit of both so this was the quilt that we worked on last or yesterday the scraptastic quilt now this quilt's perfect because it can work with jelly roll strips or scraps and so here's a version of it in the jelly roll and that's what i made on the episode but what i want to show you is how cool it looks in scraps so this is joanie's quilt she made out of scraps and i love it love it love it love it so if you're interested in checking out that video you should it's pretty fun all right now let's talk about our main topic um the business of long arm quilting or business of machine quilting so what i want to do is not tell anybody how you should do anything i'm just going to tell you about all the mistakes i made and how it still ended up okay and so hopefully give you a little bit of reassurance there so nobody i did not really set out to be a machine quilter or a quilter in general it's not like you can necessarily take that class in high school or you go to your um career guidance counselor like oh yeah you should be a speaker teacher and a quilter because it just doesn't work out that way i had no idea what quilting really was and i wasn't ever crafty as a child well i mean like crafty in a constructive way i was crafty in a different way but i wasn't into any of that or had any idea of it it wasn't until i met my husband's grandpa that i learned how to quilt and so if you've watched any of my live chats you might have heard of this my husband's grandpa taught me how to make quilts and he is the biggest influence on me to become a machine quilter which is kind of ironic because he never machine quilted a day in his life but he is definitely the main driving force behind that so let me set the stage for you i come into this family i'm dating this guy he's very attractive i'm trying to get him to propose good news he does i got him but his grandpa his grandpa and grandma they both they made quilts to give away at family reunions so this was kind of their thing so here you can see some pictures from a couple of our reunions i won't go into details with the story of it just but just know it's very regimented there is rules and you follow the rules so to win a quilt you have to be like they make a quilt for every generation and you have to show up and they have a young marriage quilt and you can only win the quilt once it's a whole thing so the very first reunion that i went to with my boyfriend at the time i see these quilts hanging up and they're giving them away and and if you've ever been to like some kind of gathering where people get upset over like potato salad right or something little just imagine what happens when you throw quilts in the mix right so there i am my first reunion they're handing away the quilts and some people were upset about such and such had already got one or maybe they hadn't i'm not going to go into detail because i live too close to home you know they're around me i don't want to get in trouble but i remember sitting there that first reunion watching these people fight or get into this argument about it and i'm like oh my gosh geez they're just blankets okay so this is why i'm so glad it's through the camera because i know i'm sure some of you are like what i'm showing you my level of ignorance right if i'm calling them blankets it's like i don't really know what they are but obviously people want them so i decided maybe i should make a quilt maybe if i make a quilt i can get jeremy to propose that's that's about how deep and profound i was thinking at the time right and so these pictures you can see grandpa in the top right there the quilts are always set out and everybody can look at them and then they give them away and at the bottom left is drake my son who is now 18. that's crazy but that's the quilt he won so he won his generation's quilt already so very cute right so this is a thing i tell grandpa grandpa i will you show me how to make a quilt i'm going to make jeremy a quilt and so he did so this was the first quilt that we made and he was such a good teacher oh my gosh and i won't go into too much detail i don't have hours to talk but when i went over to his house the first time again remember i have nothing i haven't sewn since eighth grade homeek and it was trap it was not good um we decided to make a nine patch because that would be the best way to start and so he traced out a template for me a four inch four and a half inch square out of cardboard and had me trace all the squares of fabric cut them out with scissors and make my nine patch so like two hours later i have my block finished and he said oh that's great now let me show you the easy way and then he got out the rotary cutter and the ruler thank goodness because i probably would not be a quilter if i had to cut that out all by scissors but he was he was always a trickster always joking always so much full of fun so that was the first quilt and that quilt is still on our bed to this day so i think my color tastes have evolved since then just so you know but you know you never go wrong with old americana and green i guess so that's the first quilt i ever did and you know because you're joining me for a live chat you like quilts you either like it or you love it and i loved it i loved everything about it grandpa became my quilting buddy i would go to his house we'd work together and then i wanted to start working on at home so i stole half of his supplies like you do he was totally fine with it and we made several quilts together now grandpa was actually a hand quilter so he didn't machine quilt he hand quilted and here's a picture of my basement when we were working on the second quilt i ever made so that was the second one it was huge and then we were getting ready to hand quilt it so lots of fun right this is my only experience with quilts i'm loving it grandpa is like the best teacher and we're just having fun but there's a problem because i would hand quilt in between him and jeremy you know jeremy grew up with quilting and his family he knew what this was about so we would sit there and hand quilt the quilts and i was not good they were great here's grandpa here's jeremy and here's me just like one at a time but here's the thing i don't have to be good at something to enjoy it i don't mind looking still silly or a little silly um which is good because that definitely helps me out but they were definitely way better than i was and it wasn't it wasn't like it was grandpa's fault i mean he did he was a good teacher he tried to share you know tips in fact one idea he gave me was when you're hand quilting if you need to go to another line of quilting you don't have to break thread or cut off you could just go through the layers of the quilt and come up on the other side perfect right makes sense except i didn't hear through the layers of the quilt i went underneath over and then came up so i had some stitches that were like this big so you can see now why when i machine quilting i'm like stitch length doesn't matter if you can't get your foot stuck in it when you pull the quilts over you you're fine so it wasn't it wasn't the best experience but we hand quilted those first several quilts and it was a lot of fun and then one day grandpa said you should come over and have pizza and that was always meant something fun was going to happen so we go over and he sit in his rocker chair and he was like i've been thinking and that's when you knew something good was going to happen for sure he said i've been thinking you should get a long-room quilting machine so that's kind of how that all came about and i said well i think i should too what is it and he goes well i don't know i saw one at a quilt show one time and i have some information coming so that's that's about the depth of the talk there now this is 18 years ago right this is before a lot of the online stuff and jeremy has this great talent that he can tell how expensive something is by the by the name of it so he was like i don't know about this long arm machine but grandpa already ordered information and we were going to come back as soon as information came in and look at it which it did a few days later all this is over we look at it we're looking at this brochure i'm just like oh my gosh what is this stuff i'm seeing but then i noticed that they forgot to put prices in the brochure well you know right if if the price isn't the bro isn't in the brochure what does that mean it means you probably can't afford it but i was undeterred i can be tenacious so i called up the company and i said hi i would like to buy a long arm i was wondering how much they are so then they told me and i thought oh my goodness that's like a child's college fund oh well maybe i could just not send my kids to college no i'm just kidding but i got off the phone i told jeremy and grandpa i said okay so here's the deal this is how much they are but let me tell you how much i can save on a used one they told me they had a used one that was only like half a college education so perfect and um jeremy's like [Music] never machine quilted right and grandpa said if you don't buy that girl a long arm i'm going to buy it for her so that's how i got a longer so if you're trying to get a long arm get your spouse's grandparent to coerce them into getting it for you um and jeremy said no he would get it for me um everybody always wanted to make grandpa really happy so i got a long arm it was great so we waited those days that you know you buy the long arm you wait for it to get delivered grandpa's excited i'm excited but here's the problem if if you get a long arm you should know oh you should first you should look at several you should make sure you have a great dealer in the area right you should probably know how it works this is true right so here's the blind squirrel right here i am i don't know what i'm doing so grandpa and i discuss this and we decide that it must be self-driven or computerized which is probably the funniest joke of the whole story obviously it's not computerized but i had no idea that i would have to actually move it around like i thought maybe there was something that it drove in and just kind of moved it over back and forth so can you just imagine the delivery day comes right and so the guy is setting up the machine and he asked me what side of the machine do you want to quilt from grandpa's there jeremy's there he's already you know said i can't stop using this in a year i gotta gotta use it can't stop and i was like um i'll tell you what side i wanna work from i to work from that side and i just pointed to one of the sides so that is about the scariest moment i've ever had because i was thinking i've just spent this much money on a machine and now i have to actually hold on a second drive it and i have not ever machine quilted up to that point now this is where i kind of like to interject because sometimes people say well why didn't you um quilt on your sewing machine well i have a great reason for that we didn't know that you could so grandpa had learned how to quilt from his mom who made quilts back in the depression and then he picked up quilting after he retired so he wasn't a part of a guild or a group he didn't know you could and i i knew even less than grandpa so we didn't know you could quilt on a sewing machine and i thank god every day that we didn't know that because i don't think jeremy would have bought me that long arm if he knew i could do with my sewing machine but he did and i got it and here's me working on it so that hand quilting frame had to move out so i can move in the machine and i started to learn how to quilt so at this point i'm kind of freaking out right i'm like oh my gosh i've gotta learn how to use this um i gotta i gotta figure out what i'm doing and so i just loaded some quilts and i started so you can see here loading quilts no that sounds brave don't you think like oh my gosh that's so brave of her it wasn't really that brave grandpa bought quilt tops everywhere he went every garage sale thrift store anything and so he had like 30 tops and they were very special i mean like hand pieced double knit like ugh these things were i wasn't going to ruin them with the quilting so i wasn't super worried about it so i just loaded those quilts and i learned a lot a lot learned so much for instance did you know that if there's a hole in the quilt top you can quilt your machine into it and it is really hard to get it out that's a true fact or i learned if there's a bulky seam from all that hand pieced fabric or that double knit that it can break your needle and then it'll freak you out but the needle will still quilt until you turn off the machine and jab through the quilt and then you peed your pants it's just i mean hypothetically hypothetically of course but most importantly i've learned that you can make your quilt back too small for your quilt top it's a true fact and you don't realize it till you get to the end now this is really before any well is before any social media and before videos and so i'm like crap i don't know what to do so i took it to grandpa i gave it to him i said only thing i could do i had to chop off the last border here you go here's your quilt top with three borders and he was like that looks fine we'll put that part under the pillow so he was always so i mean he said i was the best machine quilter he knew so it was great i didn't know what i was doing he liked it it was fantastic and you know i think i probably could have learned a lot quicker if i'd had more resources like there are today but i wouldn't probably have enjoyed it as much i think sometimes when we're so busy comparing ourselves to what other people are doing we can lose that joy of learning and i mean i was just i was a blind squirrel and i was having fun with my quilting i did i knew it wasn't great but every time i could be like ooh that doesn't look as crappy as it did last time and so it was definitely a learning process um and grandpa you know he he totally let me just quilt through his quilts and then after i was done with all 30 of them i decided maybe it was time to you know quilt my own or take other quilts and we'll talk about that here in a second but i want to show you the progression just so you can see how far i've come and i don't show you this stuff so you're like oh my gosh that's horrible i mean it's just it's rustic angela for sure but it's always a progress right every master is was once a disaster everybody started out as a new quilter or a new in some creative thing so don't think like oh i could never do it because trust me trust me if i can do it i think anybody can do it so i started out with the pantographs which is what you saw me doing on that long arm there's that sweetheart that i took and i think i showed this in my help how do i quilted her trunk show live chat but this is one of those quilts that grandpa had so you know it's it's lovely it's lovely and i guess i thought the hearts would complement the curves of the piecing i don't know and i loved it so much i took a picture off the back of the back too so you could see it so grandpa even though he was a hand culture he did love the back of the quilts he wanted to see the quilting so it was always fun but then my skills began to improve right so i finally learned now there this there's a lot of trial and error between these pictures just so you know it's not like i got it i sucked and then i was good right it was like i got it i sucked i sucked less and less and less and got better and better and better and then i was okay but this is one of the first ones i thought oh my gosh i can kind of do this right there i don't know if they're swirls or paisleys or a combination of the two not sure what was going on there but i liked it enough to take a picture of it and print it out so it was kind of nice but another example of some of the quilts that grandpa gave me and then i got super fancy and i could do little waves and some stitching in the ditch all right now that was a whole nother life lesson to learn stitching in the ditch i was not good at that but i wanted to be so there we go i kept moving on so that's kind of the progression that i had with with the machine and everything and so i'm going to just pause right here from pictures and just talk about the next portion right so i'm quilting machine quilting and i love it i love it it's it's like it was meant for me because i'm not a perfectionist i'm a people pleaser totally different neurosis and i really love the machine quilting even more than the piecing and i loved showing grandpa the next quilt i had finished and and after i quilted his quilts and i quilted a few that i had and then i started making quilts for in-laws i thought man i could either make more quilts or i could start quilting for customers and i decided to start quilting for customers right so that is about how deep that thought was right like you know i like quilting i don't like piecing if i quilt for customers maybe i can make a little money and just get to do what i love to do and do that favorite part and so so i did now when i go up and tell jeremy i come to this decision i said jeremy i've been thinking that did not bring the same response as when grandpa would say it that usually scares him when i say that um i've been thinking about quilting for customers even though that was never the plan that was never the reason we bought the machine it was always um to quote my own stuff he's like whatever so i went on to ask jeeves.com does anybody remember that like before google and i asked jeeves what i should do to be a professional culture and jeeves said i'm sure in an accent that i should join a local guild perfect right i'll join a guild and i'll get to be around other quilters and i guess i didn't even really realize there were guilds but now i do and that was a lot of fun so going to my first guild meetings you know i was 23 24 at the time um it was just a couple years ago um so young but they really surrounded me and gave me you know um encouragement they were just great and so i'm at my first meeting and they're like talking about their quilt show never been to one thinking this sounds like fun and they asked if anybody wanted to be a vendor at their show so by now you know how the story goes right i have no problem jumping into stuff and figuring out so i'm like oh i will be a vendor i'll event myself i will promote my machine quilting skills perfect gave my 50 bucks and here comes the show and there is my booth short long story short i had one table one quilt and a stack of cards at a quilt show which i'm like looking around at everybody else setting up their booths i'm like oh this is not probably what i should have done but oh well um it was funny because i was handing out cards and people would walk by and i was literally like that little girl selling lemonade right they were like just take just take her card you don't have to actually have her quilted you know like just be nice look how cute she is sitting there um but you know you try things and you don't always know they work that's the main point of this part you try something if it doesn't work it doesn't work if you try and it works great you can build off of that um but i did hand out a ton of cards and would you believe it i got one call out of that so a couple months later i get a call from a lady named kathy who is opening a quilt shop and she wants to know if i could quilt her samples now here's a great thing about kathy she wasn't really a quilter yet so i knew more than she did yay and i started quilting her samples and then plus at this time um other guild members would start sending me their quilts and so i was quilting for guild members and i was quilting for the shop and it's about an hour away from me and i would quilt for their customers and it was just so much fun i mean there's something about the machine quilting process and i know that doing it professionally is not for everybody but for me being a people pleaser when i could take their quilt and then hand it back to them and they're loving it i mean that's just like the best i just loved it and i loved working on other people's quilts and seeing things that i would never make for good or bad it was just really fun and so i mean i that went on for several years i would say probably seven or eight years i'm quilting for customers i'm having babies they're growing big and honestly to this day i probably would still be in my basement quilting for my customers loving every minute of it if it hadn't been for two things that happened pretty simultaneously right about the same time and so those two things were really what kind of gave me my my break or helped me take it to the next level so first of all let's go back to our pictures quilting for tula pink so those of you people were chatting about tula pink's live chat or live video that or video chat that she did on instagram i was on it with her and it was just so much fun quilting for tula has definitely been a such a fun thing i mean that's been going on for almost 13 years now 11 13 years yeah a long time um she makes quilts that i never you know would ever get to quilt she trusts me and it's a lot of fun and so how that came about is do you remember that here i am at my guild show and i'm out of place with my table and i'm vending and one person calls me is kathy well kathy calls me several eight years later and says hey would you like to quilt for my daughter she's a fabric designer her name is tula pink and so that is how i got hooked up with tula i'd already been quilting for her mom and tula had just moved back to missouri from texas so everything can seem like it's so wrong but then it goes okay right so even though that that one show seemed so silly and i didn't handle it right but one person called and it was kathy and i built up my business and then by time um i started quilting for tula it was just great right so let that be an encouragement right there sometimes things seem like they don't work out but it really is leading up to something bigger but what's funny about all this is so you know tula's awesome fabric designer this is us at the first market i went with her for her periscope line i mean she's done phenomenally i've i've been having so much fun and one time we were at quilt market and at the hotel bar drinking water it was good water really good water and kathy and chill i were all talking and we're super happy because you know lots of water and kathy was like i can't believe you know look at how far we've come and two and i were so excited and and i said i just can't believe it came from that one show right that one guild show that i did back in the day and she goes i know i still think about that i just thought it was so cool how you were demonstrating on your long arm in your booth and i'm like man this water is great because that i said no no no kathy i didn't have a long arm in my booth she said no you did you i thought it was really crazy how you got that big long arm in there and you were demonstrating on it and i'm like kathy that was not me and she goes oh i called the wrong person so even a blind squirrel gets a nut sometimes she didn't mean to call me but she did and in that moment my whole like quilting career with two of the flash before my eyes but i was like well now you can't you can't leave me now um so you know sometimes a little bit of a a break will help you out there too so it's we kind of joke about how a wrong call led to that but um definitely so much fun so that really was when i saw that quilts could be something that you could do more with the quilting right you could really add detail like the paracel panels that are behind us a lot of detail so much fun and then right about the same time i was invited to the very first meeting of the kansas city modern quilt guild so i mean that's been 10 years ago i think and that was here in kansas city and i go there i don't know what modern quilting is i didn't even know people had blogs and at this point blogging is a thing i didn't nobody told me i hadn't got the memo and i went to that first meeting and i remember seeing these quilts and i remember thinking oh my gosh these are amazing you don't have to turn the quilt over to see the quilting because up to that point i mean i've been quilting for my very traditional guild which i love all quilts i love them all trust me um but it was like a different thing and so i remember looking at him thinking like oh my gosh what could i do with some of these quills and so you know uh the the modern quilts that came through were unlike anything i'd ever seen right and and people i would quote for would talk about things like negative space i mean i would have meetings with jackie gearing i quilted for some of her quilts and i'd have to write stuff down and go home and google it because i'm like i don't know what negative space is but i'm like oh yeah the quilting will definitely enhance the negative space then i had to go figure out what that was and then i made it happen but larger areas to quilt and just having a lot of fun in that moment watching the modern movement rise and then also kind of enjoying my growth in that as well and that's really when i realized that not everybody loves machine quilting as much as i do i know it's super shocking right it's like machine quilting is the best part but i would go and start teaching classes and people were acting like they were punished like that was their punishment to be here and i'm like oh guys no machine quilting your quilt is not the punishment for finishing the top binding is the punishment for finishing your quilt okay i'm only half serious i don't really like binding but still and i realized that some people would talk to themselves in ways that i would never let anybody talk to me you know like just really down on themselves and i realized that's when maybe i could start teaching machine quilting maybe i had something to offer there and i had grandpa as the best best example of how to be encouraging and you know just trying things and having fun with it and so teaching is really teaching quilting is something i love i won't say more than machine quilting but it's right up there i think that's why these live chats are so nice because i would normally travel about once a month and teach classes in a guild and it's been a year since i've been teaching so i'm just going to talk to a camera and hope you guys are listening so anyway dealing with quilts that were made with different substrates like linen and like wall and or voil however you say it and then all the negative space and really taking what i already knew and applying it to that area and i kind of joke at that point i was bilingual right i was in the right place at the right time because i had been quilting long enough that i loved traditional quilts and i loved machine quilting and i had the technical skill but when this new thing started i also loved the aesthetic of it and i could i wanted to quilt those quilts too so it's like i had the best of both worlds and i could go to a traditional guild and talk about machine quilting and i could go to a modern guild and talk about machine quilting and it was great and one thing i didn't think i needed to do i didn't think i needed to come up with modern designs or different designs i just took the designs i've always used and just used them in slightly different ways right in different areas of the quilt and here's another little close-up of this one and i cannot remember the name of it i know i did it for robert kaufman and i'm sorry that i can't remember who pieced it this has been a long time ago but one of my favorites because it just shows how you can combine geometric and curve and contrast and really show off that beautiful ring of piecing so um and then that just led to quilting and teaching and and it's kind of just evolved into now this thing that it's a whole business that supports my family my husband works with me it's just it's crazy to think that it all came back from that first you know reunion where i asked grandpa to show me how to make a quilt and i think what's important about that is to say you know he when i asked him how to make a quilt he said yes he didn't say you know you have to make it with the fabric i want you to use and you have to use the pattern that i think you should he really let me be my own person and so that was super important and i think that's what's great about quilters i think almost every culture i've met is so willing to share and be generous with their time anyway i won't go down that road i'll get all gushy but so quilting my whole quilting business has evolved right it started quilting for customers and it kind of went to teaching and writing and now videos and now editing and now i'm using a switching program to do a live chat on youtube um i think learning new stuff is just so much fun now you have to know though throughout all those years there's so many mistakes so many mistakes but that's how you learn things right you try something and if it works it does and if it doesn't it doesn't there's plenty of things that didn't work out over the years i'm just not sharing them in this chat right i'm only sharing the stuff that did work out because come on that's the whole point of this uh to be encouraging but you know when i was looking through the chat beforehand there were some great questions and i'll address those but usually the best answer i would say is try something and if it doesn't work change figure try something else don't be afraid of the failure just use it as an opportunity to learn and i know oh that sounds so cheesy i know it sounds cheesy but just know from some it has failed a lot that one time sometimes they're gonna work so okay a lot of questions that came up about the whole idea for quilting for customers so now we're going to like the actual bits of it was about what to charge such a tricky subject because everybody depends on what you're offering it depends on you know how fast you can quilt it just depends so i can't really give you a good answer and i know that's always the part when i do this lecture or when i do classes on this topic that people just want me to tell them that answered like just tell me what to charge i'm like i can't tell you i can tell you what i did and not to do what i did so i looked and saw what everybody else was charging around me and i decided to charge half big mistake first quilts i did for customers were for a half a cent a square inch that's a deep hole to try to dig yourself out of not only that but think about the perception of what that is you're automatically perceived as not being very good so don't undercut people trying to get more customers because two reasons the customers you get might not be the ones that you want and it's really hard to dig out that hole it's very very hard because you can't really just triple your prices overnight so it's always easier to lower your prices than it is to raise them right so look and see what other people are doing in your area have a good estimate of the time it takes you and then charge accordingly even if you're new right because you're still worth that and if you want to run some deals i know some people in the past have been like oh can i do like new quilter deals you can run sales but don't call it a new quilter sale call it a limited time sale or do something but don't make it sound like you're new you have skills to give and i don't don't downplay yourself right off the beginning i know that's what i did i'd always say well i just got my long arm and i really want to go over customers and i knew the experience so i'm going to quit yours for half price yeah that it just isn't good right but if you want the practice and you're freaking out you don't want to charge friends are a great place to start friends guild members but treat it like it is a customer and whether that's um going through the whole process of the intake and the giving back and the charging and we talked about this in the chat before we started it'll just help you get that experience of what that looks like and even if you're practicing with your friends i think you should still charge something whether it's a small amount of money whether it's that jelly roll in their quilting room that you've been eyeing something you need to get used to the idea of swapping your skills for something um and you know and tucker's sewing also asked what price to charge by square inch you have to decide how you want to charge i always did mine by square inch because it was easy to figure out it was easy to give them a cost right up front and it was always hard for me to charge and say like oh this is what it costs so it's easier to make it easy and just get it out of the way and you know if somebody came back which did happen sometimes oh that's more than i want to spend totally fine i understand good luck have fun with that um so that was a question that came up a lot the price you just have to kind of go and see um see where you get all right another question that came up though was how to get the word out about your business right so you've decided you're gonna quote for customers you're gonna get the word out you're gonna have you know you're gonna start telling people well you have to you have to get the word out so some people are like i don't know what to do we'll start talking about it and now you have resources like social media you can quote for people that aren't just in your neighborhood you can quote for people everywhere so you start talking about it start telling your friends start telling your quilters um well before covet i would say bring show and tell and show at your guild what you're doing but the more that you're putting it out there the more things will come back and i know that in the beginning it's going to be scary first of all it's super scary to say i'm doing this and putting yourself out there like that but that's part of it it doesn't i mean it gets easier but it's always scary i mean i think of every big thing that's happened since i started from even launching the very first episode of midnight quilter that was scary like i'm putting myself out there and it's like this is like okay here we go let's see if it's gonna work or not but you have to do it and i know it's also hard to like talk about it so one thing i have a group that i mentor and one thing i always we talk about is like don't talk about yourself talk about how quilting makes you feel right so like i love quilting for customers because i love getting their feedback when they're so happy with their quilt i love putting my layer of my my art on their quilt so think of it that way but also just just talking about it and i promise that once you get that snowball rolling it takes a little bit right you get one person and then maybe you get a second and then and then it grows like a tree so you have to put yourself out there and just know that it's it's going to take a minute but it will definitely start rolling pretty fast honestly i i tell my long-run owners once you tell you have people that you have a long arm they're going to usually start asking oh i have quilts do you want to pull up them for me so it might not be as hard as you think if you just start talking about it um again you just have to get used to that i know it can be scary try to find other other business people that are in the same area as you and meet with them and be an encouragement for each other i think that's always been something i've wanted and i love that in my group so try to to cheer each other on um or i love how it says practicing on on uh charity quilts so this is more like if you want to practice your skills to get to where you feel comfortable quilting for customers but once you feel comfortable then you can kind of go on from there um okay this is great stephanie i love this she says it's funny because you appear so comfortable in front of the camera you're natural never thought you looked nervous when you started the night quilter okay it's that's so perfect right because when i first did the midnight or uh classes for craftsy way back in the day i am not a shy person at all i will talk to anybody in person is the way for me i love it um and so when they came to do the class for the first time very first time they start rolling that camera and i'm like i don't i don't know what to say it's like that once that camera goes on you get scared um and i was so sure that first night they were gonna cancel the whole class i was like i told jeremy they're they're gonna that was bad really bad but i realized okay if if something is hard you have two choices right you can lean into it or you can avoid it and both of them are fine it's okay to avoid stuff you don't like i don't like binding i avoid it that's okay but i knew i was uncomfortable on camera and i could either lean into it or avoid it and i leaned into it i took every camera thing i could get any interview on camera i i even emailed the local talk show in kansas city and i appeared on there a couple times for free doing tutorials because i wanted experience in front of camera and that ultimately is what makes me look comfortable is because i'm used to it now and then that is ultimately what landed the midnight quilt show for me people that produced that first craftsy they had a group of names they were talking about and they said they picked me because i was so comfortable on camera so if i look natural just because it takes practice so that's the thing i want to know it's not a talent it's not like an inborn talent it's a skill so it takes practice just like any creative thing right i am trying to learn how to make royal icing cookies and oh my gosh it is really hard to get that icing smooth all the way around the outside but i'm going to figure it out so anyway i'm glad it looks um natural it's just practice and yes i have lean in i have read that book is so good um and dan i don't think you're the only guy here a lot of guys quilt and i think i like to say that grandpa was the original man quilter so very fun um you can always check these live chats out afterwards too so i'm kind of looking both sides i get i get easily distracted anyway so if you're wanting to quilt for customers i think it's a great profitable thing to do it's it's it allowed me to have a business when i still had children at home and i could work from home and it was a lot of fun it really fulfilled me and it was really about that i never had i'm trying to think how to say this because i don't want to sound cheesy because i know it sounds oh it sounds so trite um i didn't have business experience i didn't i didn't know stuff but i wanted to learn and so even to this day i listened to podcasts and great courses about business strategy learning you know and i think it's a great thing to do and as long as you're working hard and you're learning i think you can't help but be successful and the great thing about quilters is we are loyal you know once you have your long arm quilter and those of you that have one know what i'm talking about you're like i will i am so loyal it's like a hairstylist right i will drive an hour to get my cut because i know the gal is good with my hair so if it's something that you think you might want to do for a business it is such a fulfilling thing and if it isn't perfect i talked a long long arm owners too i'm like that's great you you want to put for yourself i think that's awesome you do that but if there's anything that you want to you should try out try it out i think it could be fun mindy i'm so glad you came okay so let's talk about practical questions this is a great question becca my friend wants two quilt tops quilted together one for each side any recommendations i do not like trying to do that on a long arm because it's very very hard to center the quilt so on the back you're not sure exactly how much stuff is going to shift and you need space on each side so i usually tell people that want something like that that i can't guarantee that will be centered on the back and i usually say i can only worry about one side which one do you want me to worry about and i'll quit with that one on the top so it can be done but as long as you're managing their expectations and letting them know like okay it's not gonna be perfectly centered it's more of a pretty pretty back but it's not gonna be two pieces so that's what i would say um melody i'm so happy you're here too uh see if there's any questions about quilting for customers i know that it's like i said it's a very specific topic but i think i think it's so important to know that you can try things and whether whatever it is you can do it gosh now i'm getting super cheesy i need to stop okay um so just remember every time you look at somebody it looks like they have it together that every master was once a disaster and sometimes even a blind squirrel gets a nut sometimes so i'm gonna glance over real quick and make sure there's not any other questions about this and i'll be back next week for the live chat we're going to talk we're going to get right back to the practicals we're going to talk about troubleshooting tension problems and we're going to talk about how to um have the best quilting experience you can because there's nothing more frustrating than when you finally work yourself up to actually quote you're like okay i'm going to do this and you get going and the thread breaks or shreds and so i'll try to help talk you through that and give you some pointers either way i can't tell you how much i appreciate you all joining me for another live chat i'm really enjoying this little bit of community that's coming and i hope you can join me next week or any of the thursdays for another live chat if you like this video i hope you'll give a thumbs up and i hope you'll subscribe to my channel because when you subscribe they'll send you a notification when i do go live okay so everybody stay safe stay warm cannot wait to be here next week after the chiefs win the super bowl sorry that i'm trying to keep it out of there but i'm super excited anyway i'll see you guys later have a great week and i will talk to you next week

Channel: Angela Walters

Views: 26,258

Rating: 4.9833159 out of 5

Keywords: angela walters quilting, angela walters quilting videos, angela walters quilting with rulers, angela walters rulers, angela walters tutorials, creative grids machine quilting rulers, daytime quilt show, free-motion machine quilting with rulers, machine quilting on home machine, machine quilting rulers, machine quilting rulers and templates, machine quilting with rulers, machine quilting with templates, quilting rulers for machine quilting, quilting with rulers on sewing machine

Id: Zt6q6NDWKSk

Length: 43min 55sec (2635 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 04 2021