Sold a quilt to a decorator who flipped it for six times what I charged
A decorator from Atlanta came through here a few months back, bought a big improvisational piece I'd done, maybe 72 by 90, all in these warm ochres and deep blues, took me the better part of a month on and off between everything else. I charged her $1,200. Felt fair at the time. She didn't haggle, wrote the check, had me ship it.
My granddaughter showed me the decorator's website last week. That same quilt's listed at $7,200 in a client's home. "Custom artisan textile" or some such.
Now I'm not mad about the free market, I understand how that world works. But I look at what I charged her and I think about my grandmother who would've gotten maybe fifty dollars for a quilt she put her whole self into, if anybody bought it at all. And I think about how I'm still pricing myself like I'm selling at the church bazaar. Somebody out there thinks this work is worth seven thousand dollars. Maybe I ought to start believing them.
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Wow, that's a tough one to sit with. I get that you're not angry, but that gap, $1,200 to $7,200, that's not just markup, that's a whole different language of what the thing is worth.
The thing is, you charged what felt fair to you as a maker. You thought about the time, the materials, the month of work. She saw it and thought about what someone with a decorator's budget would pay for a one-of-a-kind piece that fits a whole room. Two completely different calculations, and neither of you was wrong exactly. Just... not in the same conversation.
I've had this happen in a smaller way with my paintings, someone buys a watercolour for ₹3,000 and I see it later in a frame that cost more than the painting. It stings a little, makes you wonder if you're the one undervaluing your own work. But raising your prices feels weird too, because you know what it costs you to make it and that number feels real.
No real advice, just... I think this happens to a lot of us who make things with our hands. The market has its own logic and it doesn't always map onto the labour and love we put in. Hope you find a way to price the next one that feels a bit more like yours.
That's the part that sticks, isn't it. She saw what it was worth to someone else and you saw what it cost you to make. Two different things entirely.
I've had paintings come back through auction houses with numbers that made me blink. You learn to not look, mostly. But once you've seen it you can't unsee it.
You're right, it is a different language. She's speaking interior design and I'm speaking... well, my grandmother's language, I reckon. Stitch and patch and make do, pass it down.
The $7,200 ain't what bothers me the most. What gets me is I named my price out of my own world and she knew the whole time it was worth more in hers. Didn't say a word. Just wrote the check.
I don't hold it against her. But I'm sitting with what it means to price something when you don't know the dictionary the other person's reading from.
That's about the size of it. She saw a room and I saw my grandmother's scissors and a stack of fabric I'd been saving. Two different worlds meeting at my front door.
I keep thinking, I could've charged more, I had the right to. But I also didn't know I could. You know? That's the part that sticks with me most. Not her profit. My own ignorance about what my own hands are worth.