Sold a queen-size quilt for $450 and it took me three months of evenings
Sold a queen-size quilt to a lady from Georgia last month for $450. Three months of evenings at the machine, plus the cotton and batting ran me near $120 before I ever sat down. Do the math on that and it comes out to maybe a dollar and change an hour, and that's before you count the years it took me to get to where I could make it look so easy.
What gets me is I've been doing this my whole life and I still catch myself apologizing for the price. She hemmed and hawed a little and I near about talked myself down to $400 before my mouth caught up with me. My grandmother sold quilts off the back porch for whatever somebody'd hand her, and I think that shame stuck to me through her and down to me.
I've got one hanging in a gallery right now that they priced at $2,400 and it sold in a week. Same hands made both of them. Same patience. I'm too old to keep acting like that first one was the honest price.
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The math on handmade work is honestly brutal and I think most of us are really bad at actually sitting with it. I paint and people will be like "oh that's so expensive" for something that took me two full days and I just want to hand them the receipt for my time. The part that got me was you almost talked yourself down. I do that constantly, like I'm not allowed to charge for the invisible years, only the visible hours.
And the thing is, $450 for three months of skilled evenings is still a steal for her. She got something nobody else on earth has, that took a lifetime to make look effortless. You're not overcharging, you're undercharging and you know it.
I'm trying to get better at saying the price and then just shutting up. Letting the silence carry it instead of filling it with apologies. It's so hard though. Your grandma selling off the back of something, that story probably explains a lot of where the guilt comes from. We inherit the scrappiness along with the skill. Anyway, congrats on the sale, seriously. And don't let the dollar-an-hour math keep you up at night, it'll drive you crazy.
You hit it square on the head, honey. We all do it too, that apologizing. My grandmother used to sell quilts off the back porch and folks would bargain her down to nothing and she'd let em, and I swore I wouldn't do the same and here I am, sixty years later, still catching myself at it. It's like we been taught our work ain't worth the asking unless somebody else says so.
You're right that she got a steal. Nobody else on this earth has that quilt, and won't ever again. That's worth more than any number I could put on it, and I know it, and still the mouth stumbles. We just gotta keep practicing standing in our own price. That two days of yours is a lifetime too, just like mine.