Search

I made a wedding ring quilt for a young woman at my church back in 2012. She didn't have much, her mama had passed and she wanted something of hers to carry into the marriage. I charged her $75 to cover the fabric and not a penny more. And I was glad to do it. Problem is, now I've made about seven of them since then for folks at church and I still can't bring myself to charge what it's worth. A queen-size wedding ring quilt takes me three, four weeks of evenings. Piecing those curves, all that handwork in the ditch. I know what the materials cost now, I know what my time adds up to. But these are church people, family, people I sat next to at potluck. I charged a woman from Atlanta $1,200 for a piece last spring and she didn't blink. And I'm sitting here hemming and hawing over whether to ask $200 from Sister RuthAnn for a baby quilt. My granddaughter told me I'm letting the church folks take advantage and I told her hush now, it's not that simple. But she might have a point I ain't ready to sit with.

A friend of a friend wanted a mosaic tabletop, her grandmother's coffee table, kept the legs, I just did the surface. I quoted €650 because the materials were real and I felt bad asking more from someone I sort of knew. It took me eleven days of actual setting. Two euros an hour, give or take, and that's before I mention the time I spent cutting glass and sweeping it off the floor. The annoying part isn't even the money. It's that she's a lovely woman who paid on time and told everyone about me. So now I've got three more awkward referrals coming my way, all of them from people who think €650 is the going rate for a week and a half of handwork. I keep telling myself the exposure is worth something. It isn't, really. But I don't know how to start the conversation with "that was a friend price" without making it weird for everyone. How do you all actually raise your number after you've set it once with someone's circle? I've been dodging it for a year.