It seems that every time I show a finished quilt to someone, they always ask the same question:" How long did it take you to make that quilt?" My answer is always the same:
"I have no idea. Twenty hours? Forty hours? I don't know."
Well, I decided to find out how long it takes to make a quilt. I was
contacted through Facebook a couple of weeks ago by a grade school friend, Donna. She
has a friend who is turning fifty soon and wanted me to design and make
a lap size quilt (57" x 73") from start to finish for this friend. After looking though lots of quilts on Pinterest, she decided on the
colors and design, and I made a mock up of it on my Quilt-Pro software. Here is the concept:
And here it is completed:
But I'm getting ahead of myself! I diligently timed every minute that I
spent making this quilt, and here are my results, along with a few
photos to keep it interesting.
To start with, I figured about one hour to design the
quilt with my software. I took a lot longer than that, but I was also
just fooling around with colors and stuff, so I am only saying one
hour. When the fabric from Keepsake Quilting arrived, I dropped everything and started piecing half square triangle blocks.
This...
...turned into this.
And when all the blocks were done, I was left with this on the design wall.
Each different color took twenty minutes to finish. And since there were twenty-four colors, this part of the process took eight hours. Then I took them off the design wall to arrange them.
The little picture tacked to the design wall is a mock up that I used to
arrange the blocks correctly. This part of the process took ninety minutes, but would have taken a lot longer if my wonderful husband, Bill, had not been helping me!
In the photo above, the vertical seams have been sewn. Each seam, including removing from the design wall, arranging, sewing, pressing and putting back on the design wall, took twenty minutes. For eleven seams - three hours and forty-five minutes.
Sewing the horizontal seams took sixteen minutes for each seam, so that came to four hours of work. Now it was time to audition border, binding and backing fabric, so I was off to Robert's Sewing Center.
Shopping for batting, backing, border and binding took two hours, including
travel time. Cutting the fabric for the eight border sections, pinning
them to the quilt top, sewing them on and pressing them took three and a half hours. Piecing the backing fabric took thirty minutes.
The quilt top was now ready to be loaded onto the frame of my long arm
quilting machine. Here are a few photos of the quilting process:
Laying out the top, back and batting on the floor to check for size and to place a few safety pins as registration points took fifteen minutes. Loading the quilt components onto the frame and doing the actual quilting took five hours. Trimming the quilt and squaring it up took another fifteen minutes. Cutting, seaming and attaching the French fold binding took two hours. Designing, making and attaching the label took another one hour. And the quilt is finished! Here are the final photos:
Packing the quilt for shipping and traveling to and from the post office to send it on its way took one hour. So, how long did it take me to make that quilt?
Approximately 34 hours!
Now we know! And this was for a lap size quilt, so if you take 34 hours
and divide it by the labor I am charging, I am making just under $6 an
hour. Some people may not understand why a handmade quilt is so
expensive when they can go to Walmart and get a handmade quilt from
China for $59.99.
Most people don't realize that the materials alone for a handmade quilt
will cost somewhere between $100 and $200, and maybe even more, and
that does not include the labor to make the quilt. When I tell people
that, they usually decide to go to Walmart! I can't fault them for
that, because I know that handmade quilts are expensive, and some
people may not be able to afford one right now. Maybe someday they
will, and I will be happy to design and craft one for them!
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