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I'm over the moon with joy and wanted to share it with everyone. I finally opened up my business and already I have 5 quilts promised to me. The first one is very special since the lady who pieced it used my freebie peacock applique pattern for the center block. Her friends added the rest of the borders as a round robin quilt. She chose this very pretty peacock feather allover for it (Peacock Plumes by Patricia Ritter of Urban Elementz.) Yay!

 

Of course I'm tempted to use IQ's no-sew zone for the applique section but the sale price is only for allover quilting so I'm sticking with it.  :)

 

Here's the quilt top:

http://www.lemontreetales.com/lemon_tree_tales/2014/08/marys-peacock-quilt.html

 

I also set up a business website. Tell me if I should change anything. http://www.thequiltedlemon.com  The other quilts should be coming from people that I know online. It'll probably be a while before I get local customers but it makes me feel great to get the ball rolling.

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Congratulations!  Your web page looks great - shows what you've been up to . . . you'll be as busy as you want to be before you know it.  I always try to make sure my customers know how much I appreciate their piecing (even if it's not perfect, it's still their quilt) and let them have lots of input on patterns and thread choices.  Good luck!

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Tami, look forward to following your blog.  Good luck as you enter your new career.  Your work is just beautiful and I know you will be successful!  Put your business cards in as many surrounding LQS's as you can and become involved with local guilds.  Do a trunk show for them if you can.  Spread the word!  You have so much talent - I think you have found your niche!

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I liked your website and enjoyed your blog posts.  This is very exciting for you!!

I just received my new Lucey and need some practice tops, so I was excited to see your pattern link to the Supersized nine patch.  I'm going to use it for sure!  Thanks for sharing.

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Opening a business takes a lot of work - is very exciting - Congratulations!!!  Wish you the BEST!!!

 

The quilt is beautiful.  I think an all over will kill the applique.  I recommend using the no sew.  When complete this is a representation of the work you do and word travels fast.  I recommend calling the customer and explain that after looking at the quilt you feel that the sale price quilting will not do it justice and she put so much work into it, it deserves to be quilted to be a prize winning quilt when complete.  Maybe give her a break on the custom work say 25% - 50% since this is the first custom.  I am sure she would understand and appreciated your honesty.  Then if she does't want that then you know you have done due diligence to communicate what your expertise (gut) is saying would like best.  Like going to the Dr. who recommends a diet and you choose not to follow the advise. 

 

Thanks for sharing.

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Thank you everyone. The logo and website are self-made. Took a while to figure out how to use Adobe Illustrator (I'm more comfortable with Photoshop) but it finally came together. The website is just a Typepad blog with separate pages for the different tabs. I've had the Typepad account that gives you three blogs. For years this one was my unpublished testing site. So I just redesigned it and then domain mapped it to my new domain. (I got help from my husband on that end since he works in the internet network field.)

 

As for the no-sew zone, boy am I starting to really think that I should at least do it for the peacock. I have a muslin practice quilt on the frame right now. I think I'll draw a peacock block and give it a whirl. If it goes well then I'll do it. Maybe do SID around the applique and a cross-hatch background. My hand-guided fills aren't up to speed yet and I think it'd take more time to figure out how to add it using IQ.

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Tami,

Your website and quilt both look great! As an appliqué person, I could not run over that appliqué with an all over, and Judith is right, this customer will show this beautiful quilt to all of her friends so even if you have to take a hit on the pricing for quilting it, it is your quilting reputation that is at risk here. (Chalk it up as advertising in the long run). I would give her a bill with what it would normally cost and then give her the first/or new customer discount for what you want to charge her. People will see her beautiful quilt and then ask her who quilted it and how much...and they do talk about how much they paid...this way others will know how much they can expect to pay if they have you quilt for them, they won't all be expecting the same great deal...everyone's happy!

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