Did the math on a commissioned quilt and nearly put the needle down

A lady from Montgomery commissioned a queen-sized quilt, wanted it in her mother's old dresses and a Sunday shirt her daddy used to wear. I charged her $450 and felt a little bad about it at the time, like I was asking a lot.

Well I counted it up honest. Sorting those dresses, taking them apart at the seams so the cloth laid right, the piecing, the quilting, binding. Sixty-one hours across three weeks. That come out to about $7.38 an hour and I supplied the batting and thread out of my own pocket.

And I still felt bad asking for the $450.

I told my granddaughter and she just looked at me like I'd lost my mind. She said grandma, you spent a whole week and a half of your life down there at that machine. And she wasn't wrong. But it's a funny thing, this work, you grow up where the women never charged for a quilt, you gave one for a wedding or a baby or to somebody whose house burned. Money on it still feels a little bit like shame to me sometimes. I know better in my head. Getting there in my chest is another matter.

That $450 quilt is on her bed right now with her mama's plaid and her daddy's Sunday shirt all in it. And I'd do it again for the same money, if I'm honest. That's the part that really ought to bother me. 🙂

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Elin Holm·1h

The $7.38 an hour is the part that stays with you, but I think the guilt is the more interesting thing. You undersold your own hours and still felt like you'd overcharged. That's not math, that's just how we're wired when the work is personal.

I do collage with found paper. I can't honestly bill for the hours either, because half the work is looking, and nobody pays for looking. So I charge what feels defensible and eat the rest. I've made peace with it mostly, but I notice I never feel bad on the days the work goes fast. It's only when the hours pile up that I start apologizing for what I should have asked in the first place.

Sixty-one hours, three weeks of her mother's dresses. She got the real thing for $450. I hope she knows it.

Lukas Brandt·42m

The looking. That's the whole thing, and nobody prices it. I paint oil and cold wax, and I'll have a canvas sit in the studio for two months where the only honest work on it is me standing there, deciding. Sometimes I think I should bill for the standing. But there's no line on the invoice for the hours you spent not doing the thing, and so we fold them into the hours we did do and then feel guilty that the number looks too high for the hours shown.

The part about the days the work goes fast, that's genau right. When a piece comes quick and easy you take the money like it's a gift. Only when the time shows up in plain numbers do you start apologizing. As if the thinking and the deciding weren't the work too. It's the oldest lie in the trade, and we all keep telling it.

Gloria Mae JacksonOP·2m

The looking. You said it better than I could have. That canvas sitting there two months, that's not wasted time, that's you cooking something. Folks just can't see the pot on the stove.

And you're exactly right about the fast days. When a quilt come together quick and easy, I take that money and thank the Lord and don't think a thing about it. It's only the long ones that make me feel like I stole something. Ain't that backwards? The harder I worked, the worse I felt. That's not math, that's just the way we were raised to think about our own hands.

I'm glad you said it, because I been carrying that guilt like it was mine alone to hold.

Gloria Mae JacksonOP·1h

Honey, you got it exactly. The looking. Nobody ever paid a soul for the looking, and yet that's where half the soul of the thing lives.

And you're right about which days I feel bad. It's never the easy days. It's when the hours stack up that I start whispering apologies to the Lord and the customer both, like my time was somehow shameful. Sixty-one hours of work and I'm the one saying sorry.

I told my granddaughter and she just looked at me like I'd lost my mind. Said, "Grandma, you charged less than a plumber charges to look at a pipe." And I know she's right. But knowing it and feeling it are two different things, and I'm still learning the feeling part.

Maybe that's the real quilting. Stitching our own worth together one square at a time.

Kasia Nowak·1h

The $7.38 an hour math hit me, because it's always the same with handwork, isn't it. Nobody pays for the hours, they pay for the thing. And then we feel guilty on top of it, like we tricked them.

I've had that exact feeling with pastel portraits. I'll quote someone $300 and apologise in my head while I'm typing it, and then I'm down at my desk for twenty hours and it works out to nothing. But if I'd charged what the time was actually worth, I'd have told myself I was being greedy and probably never even sent the invoice.

Sixty-one hours is real. And the cloth from her mother's dresses, you can't even put a price on that, that's a different kind of labour entirely. I hope she frames it somewhere she can see it every day.

Gloria Mae JacksonOP·1h

Child, you said it better than I could. That guilt is a real thing, and it's been with us a long while. My grandmother used to say we were taught not to ask for much, that our hands were supposed to be a gift. And somewhere along the way we believed it.

The pastel portraits sound like some kind of kin to the quilts. Twenty hours for $300 and apologizing in your own head while you type it out. I know that feeling in my bones.

Here's what I'm learning, slow as it comes: that lady's money paid for more than the hours. It paid for her mama's dresses being handled gently, for the remembering. And that's worth something too. But honey, that don't mean my time ain't worth something on its own.

I'm still figuring out how to ask for what the work is worth without feeling like I snuck something past somebody. You find the trick to it, you tell me. We old hands gotta stick together.