What's the worst thing you've ever done? to a quilt?

[pigletaz]

Ok, so I'm new and I wanna avoid some potential huge mistakes - what's the worst thing that ever happened with a customer quilt? OR THE FUNNIEST (or maybe not funny)

[quiltingtina]

Apparently no one wants to admit anything.......

[JudyL]

There are so many things that you'll want to avoid. Some things that come to mind:

1. As just happened to Linda recently, make sure the backing is large enough and you load it correctly. Don't be afraid to tell the client that her backing or batting is too small if in fact, it is too small. I've never run out of backing/batting on a customer's quilt (although I have on my own!) but I've been sweating down to the last minute sometimes and wishing the whole time that I'd sent it all back and asked for a larger backing or batting.

2. If you over oil the machine, a little drop of oil will drip down from around the light bar. It's happened to me a couple of times and a little baby powder has always absorbed the drip.

3. Make sure you don't move the machine (as in to slide it out of the way) with the needle down in a quilt. I've never done this but I've heard of it happening.

4. When you oil the bobbin area, sew a few stitches on a scrap because sometimes the bobbin thread comes up looking dirty.

A few things that are purely business and not necessarily something done to or with a quilt:

1. Never bad mouth a fellow longarmer or her work. There will be times when someone will tell you that SuzyQ down the street charges less, or does more quilting than you do, or that she's quicker -- come up with a good response but never appear to be bitter or competitive.

2. Always (ALWAYS) get the quilts to the customers on time. If you're not sure how long it's going to take you, overestimate the amount of time you need. If for some reason, you have to miss a date that you promised the quilt would be ready, call the customer and explain your circumstances. Don't wait for the customer to have to call you.

3. Give the customer a detailed description of the quilting you're going to do on the quilt, including thread colors/types, designs used, where you will quilt in the ditch, where you will meander, etc. Give her an exact price. If it takes you twice as long as you thought it would take, so be it and next time you'll figure it better. Most of the problems I've seen with longarmers and the customers have arisen when the piecer thought the quilter charged too much or they didn't get enough quilting. If all that is worked out ahead of time, there can be no surprises.

I have had times when I gave the written proposal about quilting and then when it was time to do the actual quilting, I thought of a better idea. I would e-mail or call the customer and 100% of the time, they've said "do whatever you think best" but still, I always give a written proposal of the quilting to be done.

4. Never let them see you sweat! Always appear confident in what you are telling them. Your confidence in your own quilting abilities will give your customers confidence in you as a quilter.

I'm sure there are lots more tips that others can share but these are a few that popped into my head tonight.

[pigletaz]

thanks for your honesty! I really appreciate it. I love all the stories on this chat. Everyone is so supportive and generous. thanks!

[Patch]

Well....... I think that last I made, for my MIL, was probably the worst. I washed it. Yup. So many had said how they like the look of a washed quilt, as it seems already old and loved. Well, I forgot I'd used 100% cotton batting, and didn't pre-wash it. So I sent my MIL her Mother's Day wheel chair quilt looking quite shrunk up. But she loved it anyway! of course! I'll never do that again, however. I hate the idea of washing batting ahead. I tried it once and it all fell apart. But maybe the 100% cotton wouldn't do that....

[CucumberQuilting]

Another quilter in our town, [We're all friends in this together and get along well by the way.] -- anyway, she used blue chalk to mark a circle before quilting, on white fabric and it wasn't coming out!!! WHAT was she thinking? --the rest of us thought! We tried everything short of washing the quilt, which she really thought about doing, and we cried "NO!"

No, no, no. Do not wash a customer's quilt without asking. You could end up with an even bigger problem.

All ended well. The customer loved the quilting on her quilt and the blue chalk marks had mostly rubbed away by the time she picked up her quilt and when the quilter explained what had happened and that she had tried to gently remove it short of washing the quilt, her customer was not upset at all. In fact she plans to wash the quilt herself before she gives it as a gift to someone else.

[CucumberQuilting]

In another situation, a regular customer of mine brings me quilts and says, as most of my customers do, "just quilt whatever you think is best."

No problem, I like that the best unless I'm just completely stumped on what to do. Then I'll usually confer with another quilter for suggestions.

Anyway, I quilted a small Baptist Fan on her quilt and she was really dissapointed. Most of the time her quilts are completely custom so I suppose she felt I had sort of short-changed her on creativity or something.

She showed the quilt to a couple of our other quilters in town to get their opinions on it and they were so good to me. They both praised the quilt and the quilting telling her it was an appropriate choice for her quilt.

Thank goodness for fellow quilting friends in a small town!!!

She has since brought me another quilt to do.

[CucumberQuilting]

PS: That's no where near the WORST thing I've done to a customer's quilt but I'm not telling!!! :cool:

[ffq-lar]

Worst thing done to a quilt?? How about worst decision concerning a top?

As an absolute newbie I visited an LQS to drop off a sampler and business cards and casually mentioned to the owner that I would, of course, be happy to quilt a shop sample for her at no charge. She immediately handed me a queen-size top that had been pin-basted and asked for it back right away as it was the BOM for one of her in-store clubs. Sure, heh heh, (gulp) no problem, right away. (Please see #4 hint from JudyL above!)

I finished that sweat-producing, clammy-handed, OMG, monster in two weeks. I learned so much (especially how to effeciently frog) and built my confidence--but also humbled me so I try not to take on more than I can handle. Now I love sampler quilts!

BTW---she loved the quilt and I am sure she loved the price!!

Eva---we're intrigued! Tell us!

Linda Rech

[Jeanette]

Always check direction and orientation on the quilt back when you pin it on!

I did one without a hitch until I took it off and realized the backing was on 'inside out'.

Thankfully it was one of mine and a very small community service quilt.

Made me absolutely paranoid about checking the backs.

Jeanette

[dtreusch]

Ok, I'll fess up.

I tore a customers quilt while advancing it with the needle down. I was doing SID and didn't want to tie off and start again. So I left the needle down and advanced the quilt. About the time that I should have stopped advancing, the dog came downstairs and distracted me. I ended up with about a 2 inch tear through all three layers. It took less than 2 seconds to do the damage and I spent at least 6 hours fixing it.

The story ended well, but the the lesson was learned to use extreme caution when advancing with the needle down!!

Another tip I learned in a class at Tacoma is to always unwind and pool thread on the quilt when choosing a color of thread with the customer. The color usually looks different when it is pooled on a quilt vs. just holding a spool of thread against the quilt.

Debbi

[pigletaz]

I guess I'm just scared of doing the really silly things that make you say to yourself --- ok, how did I do that@! I've got some charity quilts lined up for when my machine comes and I want to make a good first impression. I've heard alot on this forum and I wanted to see what the really out there stuff was. Thanks for sharing!!!

[CucumberQuilting]

I'm a s-l-o-w learner.

I've done Linda's, Jeanette's and Debbi's mistakes too, besides my own original ones! And I've done some of them twice! :(

I did Debbi's mistake on a high profile competition quilt made by a Master Quilter. yikes! Couldn't even blame it on the dog though. Don't have one. I did want to throw it in the lake and tell her the dog ate it but she would have figured it out somehow. Then I'd be in quilter's jail for sure. Instead, I was able to "fix" and overquilt to disguise the tear. It went back to her and then off to the competition. No one has ever said anything about it -- and DON'T go blabbing it to everyone now either!

[quiltmonkey]

I remember a while back there was a thread on this chat about "what not to do" and I found it...ha!

Here it is. Pretty funny stuff here... LOL :P

http://www.apqs.com/quiltboard/viewthread.php?tid=3426#pid26347

[CucumberQuilting]

Another oops, forgeting what thread the customer chose for her quilt when you finally get around to actually quilting it. Writing it down would make sense but that's WAY too organized for me. So I came up with a system to put the actual spools of thread in a fancy schmancy bag with their name on it that goes back with their quilt.

But there was the time recently that I took that quilt out to work on and couldn't remember which thread was for the top and which one was for the bottom. Oh well, if I can't remember and they both work well on either side, they're not going to remember either. Yeah, right. First thing she said when it was delivered, "Oh, is that the way we decided to use the thread? I thought it was the other way." I just smiled. -- She does love the quilt and has just brought me over another one to do.

Gotta luv those gullible customers.

[Susanri]

My kitty vomitted on my MIL quilt:)

[CucumberQuilting]

and there's the...

wrong batting in the wrong quilt. ~~ man i just hate that one :mad:

...and then there was the time... I forgot to give the customer back her leftover batting from a packaged batt she brought me. I gathered up all the ends of pieces of leftover batting I had stuffed in my studio everywhere and took them to guild to sell off and give away to their charity projects.

Yep, sold off her end piece too. Yep, could be she actually bought her own batting back!

...and then there was the time... I charged a customer for batting when she had brought her own batting in with her quilt top. She called me on that one ASAP and hasn't been real friendly since. If she saw my studio she would understand how that could have easily been an honest mistake, not an attempt to gouge her out of $9 bucks!

[CucumberQuilting]

And for you newbies out there, you can read all these horror stories and rest assured life goes on.

Sounds like I'm one of the world's ditziest blondes who couldn't rub two matchsticks together to start a fire and guess what? I actually have a successful business! Life is funny, life is flexible, move on!

Enjoy the ride. ~~ Eva H.

[tsurich]

I've done the needle down tear. I think it was needle down and stylus down in a template.

Another missed an entire block so she had to return it for me to quilt the block.

And one the customer thought was bad. Do what ever. It had a dark purple wide border with small 1-2" maple leaves. So I stippled in matching dark thread in the dark so the leaves would pop. I figured she must of liked the border fabric. I have to say too this was when I was quilting for a shop at the shop and had little contact with the customer (wasn't to make phone calls unless really needed too). She didn't like that, so all of us at the shop ripped out the small stippling (it was nice that they let the others help when things weren't busy) and replaced it with "a maple vine" that she requested. Of course it didn't really even show. I like it better now when I get to talk to the client and can call whenever I want.

[CucumberQuilting]

Oh, and one more. Linda B. knows this one from our friend Shireen.

Shireen had two customers who EACH picked up the wrong quilt and neither one of them figured it out for days!

Now, I understand us forgetting who's quilt is who's if the name somehow becomes separated from the quilt. We see LOTS of quilts in a year. But the customer? And not one but BOTH of them? That's a hoot!

[Mary Beth]

The last t-shirt quilt I did, the customer selected one setting and I did a different one....I didn't even look at the work order...why did I make one up if I wasn't going to look at it? When I called him to tell him his quilt was ready, he said, "I can't wait to see this done in the 'crazy setting', she is going to love this - they look so cool like that." Crazy setting!!! I had to tell him I didn't do it that way. You could have heard a pin drop. I felt terrible. I was at MQS when he picked it up - thank the Good Lord!! But I called him after the graduation party and he said it was the talk of the party, everyone loved it, his ex-wife (the grads mom) cried!! Alls well that ends well...but I am reading my directions from now on.

MB

[Bonnie]

Confession time....I've done the tearing of the quilt with the needle down...not once, but several times. I don't have an advance on my machine...totally manual, DUH, ya would think I would learn to life the needle first. I finally got that one straight after a couple of years.

BUT MY worst was when I cut a customers quilt not once, but Twice on the same quilt. I will never use a seam ripper again, don't own one anymore and will never have another one in my house. Its way to easy to slip when you are frogging and since I have learned to use a very tiny pair of scissors and I cut every 4th or so stitch and pull out the bobbin threads..comes out like a zipper.

But I do have to say even though its been a few years since I cut or tore a quilt...I'm still learning something new each day. SO I guess my papa will be proud of me. (His favorite saying was; If you learn something new each day, your day wasn't wasted.) And his other one was the all answer for "IF I HAD....." "If a frog had wings it wouldn't hit its boot" except his said the real word.

[CucumberQuilting]

Oh Shana, you are so, SO Funny! I went back and read the previous thread you found for us. Now I'm spit, laughing coffee all over my computer.

That would be a new one. #16 I think! ha, ha, ha... NEVER laugh with caffiene in your mouth anywhere in your studio!!!

What a lot of fun we are. I've done #8, #9 and #10 in the same day on the SAME quilt! No wonder our husbands sometimes wonder what the heck we are doing this for. "And you get paid how much to do this?" they'll ask. "Oh, next to nothing when it's going good and probably nothing at all when we spend all night frogging!" laugh, laugh, laugh

Oh, good grief. I'd better get back to work now. Love ya! ~~ Eva

[QuiltNutOne]

was loading a quilt and i had the machine on my left instead of the right(just how i load). i bumped the machine and the wheels got tangled in the backing and left a triangle of oil on the backing. i was almost sick.

lucky for me the backing is quite large and i was able to quilt the quilt and avoid the mess i made. won't make that mistake again!

one of my first customer quilts was flannel top and back. the batting got bunched when i rolled it and never noticed. had to frog 3 rows out to fix the quilt

[Mary Beth]

Bonnie,

I cut a customer's quilt using those little scissors that curve up at the end. I clipped the threads and heard a rrriiippp...I had the points pointing up - I still don't know how I did that...that was the day I learned to dance - not a happy dance, but a dance just the same