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Friday, March 29, 2013

An Ambivalent Finish

I finished up my pixelated heart baby quilt this week. I'm still on the fence about putting in in the silent auction with the handprint quilt, but I think I'm just going to bite the bullet & do it. I know what it cost to make, & what I believe it to be worth, but when you put something in a market, its value becomes whatever some one is willing to pay for it, & that's just something I'll have to accept.
The difficulty in pricing anything handmade is, for me at least, the biggest part of the struggle in selling a quilt. People too frequently assume handmade = cheap, or because I'm a stay at home mom that my "free" time isn't valuable, so I always feel a twinge of insecurity when asked how much a quilt I've made cost to make, or would cost to buy. Do I value it at materials alone? How much is my time worth, exactly? It's a calculation I don't feel comfortable making. So far, when making things for friends & family, I always just sew for the cost of the materials. I'd be sewing something anyways, & if I charged a fair price for time & labor, I doubt anyone would want to pay for my as-yet-mediocre quilting skills. (Although I'm improving!)
Anyways, here it is, in all its imperfect glory:

In other news, I decided this was the perfect quilt to test out some free motion quilting, since I'm not terribly emotionally invested in this guy. It's the very first thing I've ever tried to FMQ. I went with loop-the-loops, since I figured that was the most forgiving design. Overall, as a first attempt I'm fairly pleased with the results. The stitch length got a bit wonky at times, & I *may* have overlapped lines once or twice,but I avoided any major disasters. I really enjoyed the process, & I will definetely be doing more, although for important projects I'll be sticking to straight lines or hand quilting for a while yet.

I think next time I'll quilt in the borders too. My husband convinced me to leave them plain in this one, & I'm not sure I like the effect. I didn't have a a yard of fabric I wanted to sacrifice for the back either, so I had to piece one.

It's a cute little quilt, I guess, & if I were keeping it for myself I'd probably be pretty pleased with it. Since my baby has outgrown baby quilts however, into the auction it goes, & I'll hope it makes good money for the preschool.
TGIF!
Linking up to Finish It Up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts.
Kate

6 comments:

  1. I think it is beautiful. I agree about putting something up for auction. I just put a quilt up for auction and it sold for about the cost of the materials.

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  2. I think it looks awesome. I am loving the loop the loops!! I wish I could do something like that. All in due time!
    Great job Kate!

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  3. It´s a beautiful quilt.
    I agree it´s so hard to decide what price a quilt would have.

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  4. Yah I hear ya about the auction. Some of my friends and I participated in a quilt auction every year for world relief and sometimes its depressing. Other times if its the right quilt it goes for waaaay more than you'd ever guess. It's such a scary shot in the dark!

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  5. It looks awesome, well done! All the best for the auction.

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