Charlotte Sometimes

Tag: fabric

Costing the Nordic Quilt

I recently came across this really helpful article and handy spreadsheet by Molli Sparkles about professional quilt pricing. It’s well worth downloading the spreadsheet and putting some figures into it, seeing what kind of amount pops out the bottom as your ‘retail’ price.

I tried it with the Nordic quilt that I’m just finishing the binding on now. I had an idea that I wanted to sell it on Etsy when I finished, but I wasn’t quite sure what sort of price to list it as. (As it turns out, I made a bit of a mistake with some of the quilting so it’s destined for my sofa rather than someone else’s sofa.) I guessed that someone *might* pay about £400 if I could but the right artisan, handmade spin on my listing. But that would take ages to sell I reckon, since I have no brand behind me and no track record. *le sigh* It’s always an uphill struggle when you start out.

So anyway, here’s the spreadsheet I filled in. I have used a wage that many of my craftsman/maker friends use as a target – £20 per hour. I feel like I have the sewing / quilting skill to justify that amount.

Yup, that figure at the bottom there says £795.90 in total. That’s how much I should sell the quilt at, to get a half-decent hourly wage and a small amount of profit in my business.

I mean what I find interesting about that spreadsheet is how little difference the fabric makes to the final price. I used roughly four meters of fabric for the front of that quilt. At premium UK rates I would have paid about £48 – nearly double what I actually paid from the fabric from Massdrop* (although worth noting – I bought a large FQ pack and only used half of each except the solid colours, I still have £20 of fabric sitting around in the same colourway). You could equally save money by buying from somewhere in the States like Craftsy*. But the reality is that it just doesn’t matter that much.

Buying in the UK would have made my quilt cost £820 rather than £795 – but the problem is that nobody is going to pay that much for that quilt. Which is a shame really, because the binding is looking really rather neat, and I have enough fabric to make another… and check out that gorgeous Ikea fabric I’ve used for backing! Isn’t it just lovely? I can’t wait to see how it washes and perhaps buy a few more bundles of it.

April 25, 2016
#10: Nocturne Quilt Top

These fabrics are from Janet Clare, designing for Moda. It’s a really lovely collection – I love some of the abstracts in it (particularly that little matchstick type print). I’m not really into prints, so the rest of it isn’t really to my taste.

However! This isn’t for me, it’s for my Aunt as a birthday present later in the year, and she loves these kinds of colours and prints. So I reckon we should be fine.

BTW, have you checked out Craftsy lately? I’ve been buying so much new lovely fabric there recently. It’s a great price if you’re in the UK – cheaper than buying over here, and they include all your import taxes in the shipping fee. Mind you, it’s an expensive shipping fee, so many sure you buy enough!

I bought a couple of their quilt kits last week to make next. Adam is difficult to make for, but he’s fallen in love with some hipster arrow quilt thing. More about that when I start working on it…

Aren’t the fabrics nice together? I really like Janet’s sense of style and colour. They just work without any extra effort needed. This one was made with a single jelly roll and the same amount of plain Ikea fabric. It was Janet’s fabric that I used in my Thames Barge quilt too!

April 21, 2016
#1: Thames Barge Quilt Top

So I’m taking part in a Facebook group this year to improve my crafting skills. The aim is to make 52 things and improve your skills along the way.

This is a finished quilt top that I started working on just before Christmas. It’s made from MODA’s More Hearty Good Wishes fabric range. I picked up two 5″ charm packs and used some cheap Ikea muslin as the cream fabric. This way I didn’t have to think about the design or colour.

Anyway, I focussed on getting the points really nice and accurate. They’re not really nice an accurate, but they’re better than the last quilt I did, so that’s an improvement. I feel like I’m ready now to tackle something more complicated with half square triangles.

January 4, 2016
Ice Dyeing Attempt 1

A combination of bright colours and drabs to experiment with permanent ageing techniques for costume.

You can get a great starter kit here from [amazon text=Amazon&asin=B004WJLBPI]

September 4, 2015
Procion MX Dye – Orange

September 2, 2015
Fabric Shopping at The Festival of Quilts

So it was The Festival of Quilts this weekend in Birmingham at the NEC. I’ve been meaning to go for the best part of about 15 years now, and this year I finally got along!

The real reason I wanted to go was to scope out the competition entries. For a while now I’ve been considering entering a quilt into the competition and figured that the best way to scope out the standard was to actually go and look at them in person. But that’s for another post.

This post is about the exhibitors stalls in the marketplace areas. And the lovely things that caught my eye.

In no particular order:

Bazaar

I couldn’t help myself here. I had to buy a stamp. You see, when we were making Simon’s Mythlore Costume we discussed the idea of a golden-yellow overcoat. I wanted to use linen, dye it by hand, and then stamp using traditional woodblock stamps a white design on it. Well, the idea has stuck with me and I ended up bringing home that gorgeous one on the left hand side of the shot.

The sari trim was lovely too. None of it was quite right for any costumes I’ve currently got on the go, and I’m trying to be better about buying trim (saving my splurges for Keith’s gorgeous stuff).

The textiles on the stall were just beautiful. Check out these, with their running stitches running through them.

Art Van Go

Not the prettiest shop at the show, but amazing for picking up dyes and paints. They had a sale on Procion mx Dyes. 25g pots for £3.50 as a show special. So I picked up an Olive Green, Orange, and Black. I have plans, you see. The Olive Green is most likely to be for Simon’s next costume and the Orange and Black for a quilt I’ve now got in my head. Possibly next year’s entry to the competition!

Higgs & Higgs

I could have bought almost everything in this shop. Loads of contemporary fabrics and lots in grey. I think this one with the stags was part of the Makower Sherwood range.

And stars… lots of stars!

Village Fabrics

Another one in Oxfordshire – Wallingford to be precise. Seemed like a fairly standard range of quilt fabric, but thought that this cupcake display was particularly cute.

I think that this orange fabric was on their stall too – but in retrospect I’m not so sure. I like the texture of it though. This is going to get applied to a future quilt.

KSDP Charity

So much gorgeous stuff here. Everything is bought at fair prices from either Thai Hill-Tribe people or from Burmese Refugees living in camps. These textiles are the result of buying traditional pleated skirts and disassembling them to sell as fabric panels. At £8 a meter the price was steep – but it’s great to know that the money goes back into a student development programme where they’re teaching skills to help people become independent.

I couldn’t just splash out on the fabric without having a purpose for it, but I’m certainly going to try and come up with some ideas for using this fabric so that I can pick some up at a show in the future.

These are the tops of the skirt. The bottoms have over six meters of fabric in them – and they’re often complexly cross stitched! I love the way that a simple chain stitch has been used to hold the pleats in place.

M Rosenberg & Son

Beautiful wools for LRP. That’s all I’m saying. I’m regretting not buying stuff for Adam’s cloak now, but I’m sure we’ll find something else… right?

African Fabric Shop

I’ve bought from these guys before. I have some really lovely African block printed fabric with elephants on.

I wanted the bags for Odyssey.

And I wanted the batik fabrics for wallhangings.

And the strip cloth for… well… I don’t really know. I just wanted it.

The Silk Route

Yeah. ALL OF THIS TOO.

Regretting not picking up this tan and green textured fabric square.

And these too. I could have had all of these.

The hand dyed silks were lovely too.

And this was the haul that I came home with. John James were selling off packs of 25 needles for 30p a pack. I should have bought more in retrospect. I have no idea what ‘Au De’ needles are – but they’re straight and sharp!

August 8, 2015
Manipulating Fabric

I’m really in love with the idea of doing something different with my costumes. I love the simple lines of things like robes and tunic, but as I’ve mentioned so many times before, I also really love the idea of taking things just that little bit further. Usually I do that by trying to make the interior finishes really special and the outside very neat, but I also love the idea of manipulating and even making your own fabric.

As I mentioned in my Mythlore post, I plan to experiment heavily with pin tucking and cording in the pieces I’m making at the moment. the idea is to create a theme that runs through all the pieces and ties them together. A motif, if you want to use the fancy word. 😉

But I’ve also been looking around the net for inspiration and have been coming up with all kinds of creative things that you can do. Here’s a few that have started to get my brain thinking.

And from this book which has now gone on my amazon wish list after finding it on Google books: The Art of Manipulating Fabric

This book also looks like it might be worth a look: Shadowfolds: Surprisingly Easy-To-Make Geometric Designs in Fabric

July 4, 2014
Outer layers inspiration

More Spartacus here.

I can’t just wear a tunic, I’ll freeze to death. I’m always cold and being outside for four days doesn’t help. Who thought it would be a good idea to run a mediterranean themed game in the UK? I know exactly who. I’ll get my revenge one day.

So wraps and cloaks it is then. The long, hard task is going to be finding some suitable fabric for a wrap of some sort. The three examples below are varying approaches. There’s Spartacus’ rough blanket. I’ve got something that might be suitable here, it’s a threadbare throw that was on our couch for as long as I can remember, and worn away over the years by two labradors. Alternatively there’s the praetors smart red wrap with that golden trim that is just to die for. This in blue perhaps? I hesitate to look too Roman though.

Ganicus is in there because I like the layering his character has. You really get the feeling he’s carrying all his possessions on his back, don’t you?

Speaking of Ganicus, I’m just going to indulge for a second.

Anyway. (Also I like those bracers for my Empire character.)

Ashur in the first couple of series also had a beautiful cloak but I’m not sure how I’d go about creating something like that. Might have to visit some upholstery fabric shops. Perhaps a jacquard of some sort might work?

I want to talk about female costumes in Spartacus.

It is hard to talk about practicality here in any meaningful way, because obviously the men also have their bare chests and stomaches exposed. In southern Italy in Roman times I can imagine this would have been practical if you were a gladiator. No top getting in the way of your armour, nothing to stop you sweating, free to move etc.

I can also understand why the female slaves don’t have leather armour in most cases. The male slaves took it with them when they were freed from being gladiators anymore. It made sense for them to retain their leather arm pieces, leg armour and the like.

But the girls don’t seem to have any armour at all. I can’t imagine that after fellow slaves had fallen they wouldn’t have picked up and adapted the guys armour? And on top of that, the outfits are just so sexy. It’s all scant little threads of fabric wrapped around their boobs! God, if I tried that everything would all fall out within hours.

Having said that, I do like Navias outfit for the show. She wore something practical and it seems that she also salvaged bits of armour from other slaves. Why couldn’t all the female characters be like this instead of being ultra sexy? (Citizens excluded as they were generally in their nice dresses.)

January 25, 2014