Over the years, people have inquired about whether I sell my finished quilts. As a policy, I don’t. I choose to gift them to friends and family instead, because it seems like the safer bet. I’d much rather pass my projects on to recipients I know and who are more likely to enjoy them and appreciate my work.
For years, then, the life cycle of my quilts was simple: I would make whatever brought me joy and then decided on a home for a project. This was a fine approach, but in retrospect, there were times when a gifted quilt seemed to fall flat. Maybe the design or palette wasn’t to the recipient’s liking? (That’s understandable, especially with my, at times, limited knowledge of the person’s taste.) Maybe she just wasn’t into having a handmade quilt in her decor? (No judgment! Such people do exist!)
So I’ve honed my approach. Now I like to accumulate several finished quilts and then ask the recipient to pick her favorite.
It works! Perhaps the person doesn’t get the sense that this quilt was specifically crafted for her in mind, but she leaves with a useful piece of art that, for whatever reason, speaks to her.
And that’s the process I followed recently to gift eight finished throw-size quilts to teachers who worked with my younger son through middle school.
I have a friend who follows a similar process with family. She lays out her quilts at a family reunion, and everyone can pick a favorite or two. I conducted my process over email, contacting a few recipients with pictures of my finishes and asking them to pick a quilt before weeding out pictures of the claimed quilts and reaching out to the next small group.
It feels good to gift a quilt, and it feels even better knowing that I’ve increased the likelihood that the quilt will be used and loved by giving the recipient a say in the process.
Pictured here is one of the quilts I passed on to its forever home in the latest round of gifting. The design is Step Dance, from Not-Your-Typical Jelly Roll Quilts, and it’s a prototype I made years ago, well before I had even decided to write the book.
This project is so old that I have to plumb the depths of my memory (and email folders!) to dig up the details. The fabric is Ava Kate by Carina Gardner for Riley Blake, and Narda Junda of Maz Q’s Sewing and Quilting Studio quilted it for me in a fabulous swirly pantograph.
(You can see the version I sewed for the book, in a collection by Sweetwater, here.)
The black in this line caught my attention—I love a fabric collection with some unexpected black in it! The striped print was an especially effective addition to the quilt design, because it accentuates the idea of ascending stairs and helped me settle on a name for the pattern.
I was working with a fat quarter bundle for this project and used as much of it as I could, even piecing the leftover blue bits together to make a scrappy binding.
What do you do with your finished projects? Do you, too, pass them on to family and friends? Do you enjoy the thrill of selling them online or at craft fairs? Or do you fold them up and put them in a closet, a dilemma to solve another day?
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This version of Step Dance is beautiful in those fabrics. The combination of the roses on black print with aquas reminds me of early 1950s Barbie fashion from the Dior days, super glamorous and always topped off with the perfect shade of red lipstick! I have a novel solution to the problem of finding homes for finished quilt projects. If you don't finish your projects, there is no problem at all! :-). Seriously though, I know what you mean about a surprise gifted quilt not landing the way you had hoped. Even worse was how I felt when I realized that the pineapple log cabin quilt that I loved making for myself and labored over for years in colors and fabrics that made me happy -- once I got it done and put it on my bed, I realized that the bold and bright colors and patterns I enjoy working with in my studio are NOT actually what I wanted in my master bedroom! So I gifted a quilt to MYSELF that "fell flat!" Next time I move, I am designing a guest room around that quilt... When I started making quilts they were for my children's beds, or for baby shower gifts. One of my nephews requested a quilt as a college graduation gift, but that was because he was moving into a basement apartment in Chicago and it wasn't heated super well. I think a down comforter or heavy wool blanket would have been equally well received, but since a quilt was requested, a quilt was made for him. And of course I made my Halo quilt for my MIL because she was so interested in the project when I came home from the quilt shop and showed her the fabrics and the pattern I had picked out. But now? I am such a slow maker of anything, whether it's a skirt or a simple quilt or a pillow. And I find that I enjoy the complicated, challenging projects more than the ones that come together quickly. I have recently had the very freeing realization that no one probably wants the quilts I am working on today, at least not anyone I know, and that doesn't matter to me. I'm here to enjoy the process, and every once in a while if I finish a quilt it's just a byproduct of my meditative process and not the end all, be all objective of everything. Right now I am storing both of those XL Twin quilts that I made for my sons' college dorm beds (because where else do you ever encounter an XL twin bed but in a college dorm?), and my pineapple log cabin quilt that doesn't work with my master bedroom, and my Jingle Christmas appliqué quilt that comes out and gets displayed on the wall during the holidays. If my Frankenwhiggish quilt ever gets finished it will go right into storage, too, because the colors were my taste 15 years ago and it's throw size with a couple thousand hours of hand stitched applique in it... I don't care. My dad surely spent as much money on his golfing hobby as I spend on quilting, and golfers never felt the need to justify their hobby by producing anything useful that other people would appreciate. Each of my finished quilts is like a Hole In One trophy sitting on the shelf, a tremendous accomplishment to me regardless of whether anyone else is interested. :-)
ReplyDeleteI mostly gift my quilts as well. I have done a pretty good job of not keeping to many of them, although we have lots of quilts on our walls as art and plenty in the bedroom for the layers we love in winter!
ReplyDeleteI love to make table runners and quilts for my Etsy shop-wishing the quilts sold more often. I also love making quilts from my scraps to donate. Some are for family, however I am just about the only quilt lover in the family! Recently I gave a quilt to my 4yr old granddaughter, not sure how much it will get used but I did put a minky type fabric on the back so maybe cuz I know they like those kind of blankets.
ReplyDeleteI’m a quilt gifter too. I have been making graduation quilts for my Physics students and youth group seniors for the past 6 years. This year that was 10 quilts. I make them in the colors of their chosen college. I have been pleasantly surprised that most of these have landed well, you never know what you reaction you will get from an 18 year old. I also gift baby quilts and wedding quilts. I have sold one baby quilt, but struggled with what to charge, so I prefer gifting.
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