Sew What's Up

I was asked to make two doll dresses by an acquaintance of mine for her daughters American Girl Bitty Baby Twins. I agreed, thought it would be fun. She would like the dresses to match a dress she has for her dd, a bishop smocked dress. I made a sample out of some scraps for my dd's doll, I did a peasant style dress with shirring around the neck instead of smocking since I don't know how to smock LOL. She loved it. She bought the fabric and I have it now and will work on it next week to be done in time for Christmas. She wants to know how much I'll charge. I HAVE NO IDEA!!! How do you decide something like that? If she were a closer friend I'd do it for nothing and would argue if they tried to pay me. I at first told her not to worry about it, I enjoy sewing. But she is insisting, and when I told her to pay me whatever she thought, she said "don't do that to me!" LOL! so how do you decide how much to charge?

Check with the shops that handle handmade Items on consignment. See What they charge for something similar then decide how much you would charge.

Check out the prices for the ready made outfits for them and then increase your price by a certain amount, like say $5. Obviously if she is buying the material subtract that price from the amount.

I think the outfits go for around $15-30 for the outfits.

Ticia

Hi, I do that type of thing often, not doll clothes but other things. I decided my time is worth $15.00 per hour. I have a timer that has a count-up feature and I just start and stop it as needed. I do take the "customer" into consideration in that I take the literal time with a grain of salt. Also, you just have to use common sense. But as a rule, $15.00 per hour plus any extras like zippers, buttons, etc. I never charge for other notions like elastic, thread, velcro, etc.

For what this information is worth, Am Girl charges about $15-$30 per outfit. That's not to say that it's comparable to the value of your work, but it might be about what this woman has become accustomed to paying elsewhere.
http://store.americangirl.com/agshop/ht ... tMenu/TRUE

Thank you!!! I will definitely take the advice about timing myself, I think $15 an hour is reasonable, but since I'm a bit slow I'll probably not count all the time Thank you also for the info about the prices for the AG clothes, I'll probably try to figure a price keeping that in mind along with the fact she bought the fabric, and with the time it takes.

Glad to be of help. Let us know how it goes and what you decided, okay?

I sew for a business. I think that 15 and hour is to little. I typically expect to make at least 25 to 30 and hour. Have you seen what the other labors make. Nothing as little as we that sew for a living. It is hard work and we should be paid according to the demand. In my area there are few who can sew, much less, do a proper job of it. I stay very busy. I charge for everything except serger thread. If I make a pattern I charge for it and so should you. However, you know the speed that you sew and work. I am really pretty fast. Don't short change yourself.

I have watched this thread with interest. It is such a difficult thing for some of us to charge what our skills and our time are really worth. It certainly doesn't help when I find items in the store that cost less than I can even buy the fabric for, much less make the item!

I suppose that I've gone about by making my first project I do for someone a discount because I'm still learning and I didn't feel it is fair to charge hours of learning time, but subsequent items I charge by the hour.

For a different business (consulting), I'd seen a way of calculating hourly fees by figuring out first what one wants his/her yearly salary to be then adding in the overhead costs and so forth, this is then divided by the work weeks and hours to determine an hourly rate which would be necessary to meet that salary goal. One consultant who spoke to us then had different fees based upon whether or not her work was for a big for-profit company versus an academic institution or non-profit company. Perhaps this would help. I think I've got a spreadsheet somewhere that has these calculations built in.

thank you for all your advice! I charged her $15 each, plus I made some hair bows out of the scraps to put in the dolls hair. It is probably not enough for the time it took me, but I had fun! I posted a picture in the completed projects board
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