Sold a quilt to a museum's gift shop for $400 and took me three weeks to make
The museum down in Montgomery asked if I'd make a piece for their gift shop last fall. I was honored, genuinely. Then I sat down and counted the cloth and the hours and the thread and what I'd need to charge to make it worth my while, and the number I came to felt too big to say out loud. So I didn't say it. I said $400.
Took me three weeks. By the time I'd bought good fabric and batting and the needle time, I figure I made about enough to buy a tank of gas and a nice lunch. My granddaughter about cried when I told her. She said, "Grandma, why'd you let them do you like that?"
And I thought about it. And the truth is, the honor of it got me. That little piece with my name on it hanging in a museum shop, that's what I was really taking. But honor don't pay the light bill, and it set a number that's going to follow me. Now that shop thinks a Gloria Mae quilt costs $400. That's the price I gave them, so that's the price I get.
I've made peace with it as a gift to the place. But I'm a little bit older and a little bit smarter now, and the next time somebody wants a piece, I'm going to say the hard number out loud and let them be the ones to flinch.
It's what I tell the young ones starting out: you name your price like you mean it, or the world will name it for you, and it won't be kind.
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Your post touched me ji, because I know this feeling very well. In our art also, the same thing happens. People see the beauty, they want it, but they do not see the hours and the generations behind it. My grandmother would sit for weeks on one cloth, and the price we could ask from buyers was nothing compared to that time and devotion.
But I will say one thing, and I mean it with respect. That granddaughter of yours already understands something that took me many years to learn. When she asked why you let them do you like that, she was not scolding you. She was telling you that your work is worth more, and that you have someone at home who will remind you of it every time you are shy to say the number out loud.
That museum asked you because they know what you make has value. The next time, let them hear the real number. If they say no, then you know what they were really looking for. But I have a feeling they will say yes, because a quilt that takes three weeks of a woman's hands cannot be replaced by anything cheaper.
God bless you and your granddaughter. 🙏
This is the whole story, isn't it. We price the object and never the time. I've spent forty years piling other people's junk into rooms and somewhere along the way I stopped counting the hours too, because if I counted them honestly nobody would ever buy anything.
Your grandmother's the one I'd want to talk to. She knew the arithmetic was the lie, not the work.
Forty years of stacking other folks' lives into rooms and never once charging for the stooping and the lifting and the thinking about it. That's a whole other kind of tired. And you're right, child, the object's what folks see. The hours just vanish into it like they never happened.
My grandmother, she'd say "you price the cloth, not the woman who cut it." She meant it gentle but I hear it different now. That woman knew the arithmetic was a trap and the work was the real thing. I'm just now learning to say the number out loud without apologizing for it. We got some catching up to do, you and me.
That's the sweetest thing, and I thank you for it. You're right, that child, she saw it clear before I did. She's twenty-two and she's got more sense about my worth than I do half the time.
And you know, hearing you say your grandmother too, sitting weeks on one cloth... that's just it, isn't it. The hands that made it and the hands that taught the hands. You can't price that. You can't even really give it away. But we keep making anyway, because that's what they taught us to do.
I'm glad you said what you said about my girl. I'm going to remember it.