This quilt marks a first for me, being commissioned to make a quilt. Although technically, David was commissioned to make this quilt, it instantly became a team work project. Just like we use to have Brangelina (well before the divorce), Julie at Pink Doxies has coined us to be "Dish (Dave +Tish). So Dish was commissioned to make this quilt.
From the get go, I wasn't sure about taking on the project. I have never made a quilt for money. All of my creations to date have been for the pleasure of creating or were made to be gifts. I have never figured out a good way to put a price on what we do. That all changed the evening David texted me from work to let me know that he agreed to give a gentleman that contacted him a price on making a baby quilt. Followed by, how much would it be?
After a deep breath (go figure, my crystal ball was broken) I bombarded David with a boat load of questions. Does he have a pattern in mind? What colors in fabrics? Size? Lots of quilting or keep it simple? Time frame? Basically, what I got back was, colors dark purples and dark greens, smaller in size and keep it around $100...helpful but not helpful.
Using EQ7 I came up with three simple mock ups, a four patch and two different bar quilts.
One thing I love about this program is it easily gives you the fabric yardage needed for a quilt. This allowed me to create a spread sheet in Excel, to calculate a rough estimate on what it would cost to construct the quilt. I included things such as; fabric to make the top, backing, batting, binding fabric, and a thread usage charge. Then came the hardest part, labor. For any of these quilts, piecing and a simple all over quilting, shouldn't take too long. The size ranged from 30" to 40" depending on the quilt. So I estimated, 2.5 hours on prepping and piecing, 2.5 hours on quilting and 0.5 hours on binding. I only set our hourly rate at $10/hr since this would be a fairly simple project. This kept everything right at the $100 mark, give or take a few dollars.
After the dust settled, our customer decided on the third quilt, and David suggested we add a light green to the blocks with the dark purple bars.
The customer loved the idea and so we ran with it. I went to our local quilt shop during lunch one day to pick out fabrics, praying that David and the customer would like them. I probably wouldn't have chosen this color pallet myself, so I felt unsure when picking the fabrics. This is what the shop owner and I landed on. I forgot to ask if it was a boy or girl quilt...I crossed my fingers flowers would be fine.
Thankfully, this quilt is for a baby girl and the father to be loved the fabrics. So, last weekend, while I worked on other projects, David went to work cutting and piecing the quilt top together. We kept track of the time it took for each step of the project, so that in the future we would have a better idea when working up a quote. The prepping and piecing was estimated to take about 2.5 hours. In actuality, it took more like 3.5-4 hours...I totally underestimated.
Together we quickly basted the quilt together, leaving me to figure out the quilting. I wanted to do a quick custom quilt job on this one so badly. I even had David make an extra block with the tiny bit left over.
This is what I came up with and I 'll be honest, I just wasn't sold and neither was David. I decided that a good ol' stippling (I've finally made peace with this filler) would be perfect for this quilt, so I ran with it.
I pulled out my thread containers to decide what to use. I could have sworn I had a spool of an Aurifil purple variegated thread, but sadly I couldn't find it if I did. Maybe I've reached a point I should catalogue my thread colors...is that too nerdy??
For the quilting I decided on Aurifil #2510 Light Lilac. I love how it melts into the lovely lilac fabric that backs this quilt and disappears into the lighter sections of the front, but pops out for a bit of fun on the darker fabrics. Because this quilt will be used and washed a quite few times in it's life, I chose to machine bind the quilt. In my experience, it just holds up better. I sewed the binding to the front, then folded it over to the back. Then I clipped it into place and stitched in the ditch from the front. The Dark Egg Plant blended in nicely when I sewed off the seam line and into the binding fabric, no visible wobbles.
As for the quilting time, I over estimated. In actuality, it only took me about 45 minuets to quilt this one. So, what I underestimated in piecing I over estimated in quilting and it came to about the same over all time. Talk about luck. I think with time, it will get easier to guesstimate an approximate cost for making a quilt. I am happy to say that we pretty much came in right at the price I quoted him give or take about $5.00.
All that is left to do, is give it a good wash with some color catchers to be safe and deliver the quilt. I hope that it will see lots of warm snuggles, take some wonderful naps, play a few games of peekaboo, catch falling tears and bring comfort and maybe even tuck in a few stuffed animals in a few years. I will probably never meet the little girl that gets this quilt, but I hope that she knows that it was made with lots of love from two strangers trying to bring beauty and warmth to the world one quilt at a time.
I know for certain this will not be the last commissioned quilt we take on. David already has a 70" quilt pieced that he was contacted about making, I just need to get it quilted up by October, but we'll talk more about it later. Until then, Dish will be working away at projects. Dish. It cracks me up every time I type it.
Today I'm linking up with Main Crush Monday, TGIFF, Finished Or Not Friday, and Can I Get A Whoop! Whoop!
