quilt redux

I am SO HAPPY with how this turned out. Ain't that the happiest little quilt you ever done seen? Sorry, I'm not sure why I got all southern/mountain about that, but it seemed necessary.

You see, I'm getting ready for the craft show this week (the Speakeasy Holiday Sale, Thursday December 1st, 7-11pm, at the Gladstone Hotel, Toronto Ontario, in case I haven't already mentioned it several times. ahem) and I've been trying to add some new items to my repertoire, beyond the usual bibs. I love to make quilts to sell, and have done so in the past, but I have a really hard time actually selling them. People love how they look and want to buy them, but are not willing to spend the $125-$150 that I charge for them. Which by the way, is actually cheap when you consider all the labour that went into them. Don't even get me started. People will spend hundreds of dollars on something made by a machine run by an underpaid labourer in the third world, that costs the first world company only a fraction of the cost to make, but will not pay even a hundred dollars to buy something made by hand in Canada, since it is not accompanied by a brand name label, and was, well, made by hand. They consider that a craft and crafts should be cheap as far as they are concerned. 

All right, I intended this to be a quick post and not a sermon, so I'll move on. My point is that I'm trying to figure out ways to make a quilt more cheaply, but not by externalizing the costs or skimping on material quality. Instead, I'm trying to do it by cutting my own labour. If I can make it faster I can charge less and then hopefully people will feel better able to buy it. So my idea is to make a simpler quilt. 

First of all, its a small crib quilt/blanket. So its 42" x 42". And I did fairly big simple patchwork, but chose fabrics with high impact, so that the patterns on the fabric would provide the razzle dazzle instead of the piecing. 

 This is the backing fabric. I love backing with stripes. Its such a nice contrast to the florals on the other side.

But the big timesaver was the way I finished it. Instead of finishing it with a binding, I layered the front, back and batting inside out, and sewed them together at the edges, then turned it right side out and top stitched along the edges.    In other words, it doesn't have a binding. Which is a big time saver. 

Though I love the way a traditionally bound quilt looks, its super time intensive to make the binding and then hand sew it onto the quilt, which is the only way to get that invisible edge look. And I love doing the hand sewing, but have come to the realization that, generally speaking, people who don't sew don't care that much about how it looks, and aren't willing to pay for what that labour costs. 

So this looks nice, and tidy and keeps everything all together and takes only a tiny fraction of the time that the other binding takes. Combining that with the simple, chunky patchwork, and this quilt only took me two days from start to finish. And since I only get to word during nap times and evenings, that really means this only took about 8-10 hours. 

And I think despite the labour cuts, its still a really satisfying object. Picking the colours out for this was SO FUN. (You may recognize a number of recent-ish vintage sheet buys in here) I want to make another one right away. But I'm busy putting the finishing touches on all sorts of other projects, and I don't even know if this will appeal to buyers anyways. I'm just so pleased to be able to offer a quilt for sale for less than a hundred bucks (I think I'll price it at $80. What do you think? Any feedback on that?) I'll see, if it sells on Thursday I'll make a few more for the next craft show. 

Can't wait till Thursday. Actually, what I really can't wait for is Friday, when this will be done and I'll get a chance to sleep again. Kind of burning the candle at both ends these days. Urgh. So tired.

Comments

[hannah]

Beautiful!!

[helene B.]

I love the pattern choices, I've always greatly appreciated your aesthetic. Is the blanket quilted?

As for the pricing, I believe your price is fair, I would assume you will sell them at 80$ However I share your opinion on hand made, canadian made articles and believe it is worth more than 80$

good luck with the market