Excellent Article by AndiCrafts.

I belong to several FaceBook groups for quilters. One of these is for those of us who make our living (or TRY to) from longarm quilting. Recently one of the longarm quilters showed a beautiful customer quilt she finished that took her sixty hours to complete. S…I…X…T…Y…HOURS…! She did an AMAZING job, and everyone was in awe of the quilting she had done on the quilt. It was obvious she had used all of her talent, training and PASSION for quilting to turn this top into a show stopper. And do you know how much she earned for all of this hard work? Around $13 per hour.

Now some of you may be thinking, “well that’s pretty good, I wish I made $13 per hour”, but let’s put it into perspective. The Federal minimum wage rate is $7.25. In my midwestern state, which is NOT known for high wages, minimum wage is $8.50 per hour. That is the wage for entry level workers with little to no experience or skills.

I don’t know about your town, but in mine I can earn $10 – $11 per hour working at an entry level position at WalMart or McDonalds. Which means I need NO artistic talent, NO hand-to-eye coordination, NO investment in a large piece of machinery that I need to learn to maintain myself, as there are no dealers nearby. When it’s slow in the store, the chain store employees still gets paid. (As a business owner if I don’t find new customers to bring me quilts, I don’t get paid that week.) Even if the chain store employee just does a so-so job, they will probably not get fired. They have very little responsibility – they don’t have to find customers, advertise, make decisions that can make-or-break the business. THEY JUST HAVE TO SHOW UP AND RUN THE CASH REGISTER OR STOCK THE SHELVES.

Keep in mind, MINIMUM WAGE is the starting salary for UNSKILLED workers. Longarm quilters are definitely NOT unskilled. First off, we purchase a major piece of equipment that can run from about $5000 for a limited entry level machine, to over $30,000 for a top-of-the-line computerized machine. Next we have to take lessons and learn how to use the thing. That takes anywhere from 3 – 6 months or more of practice before we are comfortable doing SIMPLE quilting. Then we need to add in the cost of classes…patterns…books…videos…rulers…etc. We spend HOURS looking at other quilts, coming up with design ideas, deciding WHAT to quilt, consulting with other professional quilters. And CUSTOM quilting takes more time and practice to become proficient at.

When you own a business, you are responsible for EVERYTHING that happens. You have to market yourself and find new customers. You have to take the blame if someone doesn’t like what you quilted on their quilt. You have to set up the schedule, deal with difficult customers, order supplies, answer the phones and emails, do the invoices, pay the bills, etc., etc.

And when you are self-employed, there are overhead expenses. While most longarm quilters work from their homes (eliminating the cost of rent) we do have other expenses such as advertising, insurance, computers, internet, websites, utilities, etc. Oh – did we mention self-employment taxes? And those people making minimum wage at WalMart get benefits – health insurance, paid vacations, sick leave, etc. As a business owner, if I don’t work a day, I don’t get paid for that day. I have to pay 15% for self employment taxes, I don’t have any money going into retirement accounts (unless *I* put some there). And after 8 hours on my feet driving around my longarm, I may need a massage or chiropractor appointment to keep my body in good shape. Guess who pays for that? Me!

So it’s not unreasonable to figure that only about HALF of what I bill my customer ends up to be my take-home pay. So that $13 per hour my online friend made – really ends up to be only about $6.50 per hour. How many of you want to take on all that responsibility for $6.50 per hour?????

For those of you who send quilts out to a longarm quilter to be quilted, have you ever had one tell you they are no longer doing custom work? Oftentimes customers want custom work at an edge to edge (E2E) rate. Many do not realize that custom can take 2 – 5 times as long as E2E. And that not all longarm quilters will do custom – some don’t want the pressure of it, some don’t want to spend that much time on one quilt, and many are not TALENTED enough to do it. Sometimes the customer ‘just wants something simple like SID (stitch-in-the-ditch)’, not realizing that on a longarm, SID is one of the harder techniques, requiring the use of a ruler and much slower stitching than E2E to keep the stitching straight and actually in the ditch.

A while back, I was getting burned out doing custom, and actually DID stop doing it for a while. However, I missed it. I ENJOY doing custom, I just wasn’t making enough money at it. So when I went back to doing it, I changed how I priced it.

First off, a lot of what I see being labeled Custom is actually HEIRLOOM work. So I defined four categories of non-E2E work, based on how easy or complicated they were. Then I went back through my invoices and calculated how long each of these type of treatments took me. Basing my prices on a goal of $25 – 30/hour (because of course that is NOT what my ‘take home pay’ would be after expenses/overhead/etc., I’d probably only end up with 1/3 to 1/2 of that), I was able to come up with a PSI (per square inch) rate to give estimates to customers. However, I do explain that I charge for custom work BY THE HOUR. I give them a ballpark range, and if it’s too much, they can choose a simpler treatment or take it to another quilter.