Chicago Prices and Turn Around

I was recently told by a shop owner about a customer who lives in Chicago. The Chicago lady is a professional long armer, just like me. The Chicago long armer is eight to nine months out, is booked solid, and gets $0.08 per square inch on an edge-to-edge and beginning at $0.095 and upwards for custom quilting. 

Be thankful you don't live in Chicago. I'd have had the studio complete already with those prices. 

It was a busy phone/visitor day yesterday. First, mom stopped by. I was on the phone with Virginia about the shorted backing on her quilt when she showed up. After mom left, I was able to get a little long arming in and then the rush customer called and asked if he could stop by and pick up his quilt. While he was on his way over I received a call from a new lady asking about my services and expectations for dropping off a quilt top. Right after I hung up with her, Reta called and asked if she could come and get her quilts tomorrow (today) morning. I'm expecting her around 10:00.

The north neighbors came up for the night and we spent the late afternoon/evening with them to check out their house renovations and catch up on the last two months worth of noteworthy news.

I didn't get much long arming done on DW, but I did get Virginia's quilt off, added the extra backing, and put back onto Bernie while talking to customers on the phone. It's hard to long arm when I'm talking to customers. Balancing the phone and the noise is pretty phone prohibitive.

I have people coming shortly to check out the new studio, Reta is coming to get her quilts and I have appointments all afternoon; eye, screen printer, accountant. Blech.

And, yesterday would have went better if I didn't have to deal with these...

Gotta love unmeasured borders

Each roll after the first two are now requiring starch to bring in these seriously pleated borders. There's going to be some changes when the new studio is in place when I'm informed the person is a fairly new quilter. We'll have more room to spread the tops out, measure them, and identify whether there's going to be border issues. 

It's harder to explain why there are pleats after the quilt is finished rather than warning them beforehand there may (probably) will be issues during quilting due to the irregular measurements. I'm not a magician after all.