Sarah's Quilt

My friend Carrie asked me to make a T-shirt for her daughter Sarah (also one of my former students).  I have had the shirts for at least two months now, but have not had the time to start it.

I have a long weekend off school, let's see what I can accomplish.

It is 12:00 on Saturday.  I am just now cutting the shirts apart.

 3:05 on Saturday, with a one hour break for lunch prep, consumption and clean up, I am pressing interfacing to the shirts and cutting squares.

4:15 on Saturday, squares are all cut, I have laid out the design on my studio floor.  I like to take a photo once I have the design finished, then I can follow the photo when I sew the rows together.  I found it is much easier this way!

This photo shows the upper right corner, that is not visible in the above photo!

5:06 on Saturday, rows are completed.  Getting there! 

8:40 on Saturday,  top is finished.  (Yes, I did stop to make and eat dinner!  Dinner prep, cook, consumption and clean up was 2 hours.)

I spent another hour working on piecing the back for the quilt.  I am using the backs of Sarah's T-shirts to create the backing piece.  I cut the backs into large rectangles and stitched them into rows. Tomorrow, I will stitch the rows together and get this quilt basted!





All together, I spent 7.5 hours working on this quilt today.  I  still need to finish the backing, baste, quilt and bind the quilt.  Many people have no idea how much work is required to make a quilt of this nature, or any quilt for that matter.   When people ask me to make a quilt and I quote them a price, they often decide that the price is too much. 


Consider this.  At $10 per hour, I have $75 of labor invested in this quilt.  That does not account for the electricity to run my machine and iron, the wear and tear on my machine, iron, rotary cutters and mats, or the price of batting, thread and interfacing.

A little internet research and here are the figures for materials:  Fusible interfacing is $33.00 a bolt (10 yards) which is then $3.30 per yard.  I used 5 yards for this quilt.  Total cost:  $16.50.  With tax:  $18.11

I will probably use up one entire spool of thread on this quilt; I use threads from Connecting Threads.  Cost is $2.79.  With tax:  $3.06

I buy my cotton batting on sale, by the roll.  I will need 6 yards for this quilt, for a cost of $30.  Cost with tax:  32.93. 

Total cost of materials:  $54.10

At this time, I have $129.10 invested in this quilt. 













.