First project of the year, a little test for scale, motifs, use, this needle book is for me.
5×4″, indigo, madder, cochineal, tansy, osage, sandalwood, quebracho rojo, linen, cotton, silk, naturally dyed “*orts”, beads. I won’t show you the inside: apparently some 4 year old snuck into the studio and worked that part! 🙂
I had grand plans for this little work, thinking i could make multiples and offer them in my shop, enticing people with price and portability. HA! If i actually charged what that *should* be, no one would pay the price. A common problem many makers have, either inadvertently, or deliberately, is actually pricing the true value/worth an object has cost in terms of time, skill, design and materials, assembly, and in my case, the dyeing of cloth and threads, and hopefully a small markup for profit. This Thing took the same amount of time and work as one of my larger moon pieces! Would *you* buy a $100 needle book? Nope, me neither.
At least i know my new indigo vat is working though and i *did* cull some ideas for other work from the making and thinking time!
*Orts are the left over short ends of threads (or teeny weeny scraps of fabric) used in other projects.
albedo too 
I’m with you in the pricing of works – impossible to get even close to the amount that we should be able to command. I think I’ve priced my landscapes WAY below what they should be, but then I get met with sheer horror when I quote my price and people run for the hills. Oh well, there’s space to store them under my bed….
(Happy 2020!)
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Yes, too true. Remember that old chart about what it actually costs to make a “regular” bed quilt? Even other fibre artists sometimes don’t get it………. (I’ll have to find that chart, and write a post 🙂 )
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We do it for the love of the process and not for what we can get out of it. I used one of those formulas to see what one of my landscapes might be ‘worth’ and was astounded that it was well over a thousand $ – and I get met with shock when I have the audacity to ask for $250. Yep, we do it for the love of it!
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YES! I costed the above piece out, just for curiosity sake, and it came close to 300, an exceedingly spendy little needlebook then!
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I price my work with the amount I feel happy letting it go for, some things take years to sell but eventually each piece finds the person it resonates with.
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Absolutely, and so do i–but production work for bread and butter doesn’t get buyers of these products for a hundred bucks 🙂 I will *never* be able to recoup what i should be charging!
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Put that little piece in a frame and it will sell for $100 !
And/Or put it under glass (god forbid) and you could easily sell it for $200 !!
But … I have found and am guilty of as well … your audience is basically ‘other fibre artists’ who say to themselves “oh, I just love that, but I can make that myself’!
Not fair !!!
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🙂 Also true! I know there *are* artists who get much better prices for their work, and then there are those who cash in on their name–which i suppose it’s what it’s all about in the end. (Though i think of a few things i’ve seen that are outrageously priced as raw materials…) I’m really planning this year to hit other markets where it’s not so, you should excuse the expression, so “incestuous”!
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