Sold my last quilt for $850 and then sat down and counted my hours

Now I want to tell y'all something and I don't want it to sound like I'm fussing, because I'm not. But I sold a quilt back in March, a full-size, pieced from my late aunt's dresses and a few of my own, and I charged $850 for it. Felt proud handing it over. Felt right.

Then last week I got curious and did the arithmetic. Cutting, piecing, quilting by hand, binding. One hundred and nine hours, and that's not counting the two trips to the fabric shop or the night I sat up ripping out a seam I'd done wrong. Comes out to about $7.80 an hour. Less than I made at the phone company thirty years ago.

I'm not sorry I sold it. The woman who bought it lost her own mother and she cried when she unfolded it, and that quilt is where it needs to be. But I've been quilting since I was nine years old and I have been undercharging my whole life, and I think part of me believed that if I named a real price folks would decide it wasn't worth it and I'd find out I'd been wrong about all of it.

Anyhow. I'm working on a new one now, red and cream and a little off-kilter, and I believe I'm going to put a fair number on it this time. Haven't said the number out loud yet, so don't ask me. 🙂

4comments

Add your reply to this discussion…

4 comments

Niall Doherty·6d

Ah that arithmetic is a cruel dose alright. I did the same thing to myself a few years back, worked out what an edition of prints was paying me per hour and near had to sit down on the studio floor. And here's the thing nobody tells you: the number is real, but it's not the whole story either. A quilt from her dresses isn't a commodity with an hourly rate attached, it's the last of her in the world stitched into something warm. That's not a defence of the $7.80, mind, because you're right to be annoyed at it. It's more that the market for that work and the worth of it were never the same conversation and they're not going to start being one now. What I'd be curious about is whether $850 was your gut or your fear talking. Because I've underpriced plenty out of pure awkwardness, not out of any honest reckoning.

Gloria Mae JacksonOP·6d

Sitting down on the studio floor is right, honey. I did mine at the kitchen table with a pencil and had to go lie down after.

And you're right, they're not the same conversation. But I'll tell you what got me: I wasn't mad about the $850 so much as I was mad that I didn't even know the number when I set it. Charged it on a feeling. That part I can fix. Whether the market ever pays what the cloth is worth, that's a longer road and I don't expect to see the end of it. But I can know my hours before I open my mouth next time.

That edition of prints, did the number change how you priced the next one, or did you just quit doing the arithmetic?

Inês Costa·6d

The arithmetic is brutal, and I think the honest thing is that most handmade work only survives because we deliberately don't do that calculation. But I'd argue against the hourly figure as the measure of what that quilt is worth. A piece made from your aunt's dresses isn't a labour transaction, it's an heirloom with her in it, and $850 is not a fair price for that, it's a low one. The problem is not that you charged too little per hour, it's that the market pays for the object and not the hundred and nine hours of your life inside it. I don't have a clean answer for that either. I just think $7.80 an hour measures the wrong thing.

Gloria Mae JacksonOP·6d

Child, that's the truest thing anybody's said on this post. "Pays for the object and not the hundred and nine hours of your life inside it." I'm going to be chewing on that all week.

Because you're right, and here's the part that troubles me. My grandmother quilted and nobody ever paid her a nickel for one. She quilted because the beds were cold and the babies needed covering. So the worth and the price never did have anything to do with each other in my family, and I guess I carried that right on into a market that thinks different. I sold my aunt's dresses for $850 and I don't regret it, the young woman who bought it cried when I handed it over. But I won't be doing that arithmetic again, I'll tell you that. Some numbers you count and some numbers you just cover up with a quilt.