"It takes ages to finish a quilt you're not working on!"

Monday, December 02, 2013

Beautiful embroidered pillow slips.

This pair of embroidered pillow cases turned up at our opshop last week, and fortunately I was on duty and saw them being sorted in the back room. I'm not going to say how much I paid for them, but it was a lot less than I would have paid if I'd seen them on eBay! Beautifully hand stitched, a lovely addition to my collection, which has been static for some time now. I'm trying to resist buying vintage linens because I have no space for any more!

The bunting I made to decorate our house this Christmas is now decorating the Brotherhood Opshop where I work. I took it in to show the ladies I work with, and they urged me to hang some up to see how it looked. I put one length up, and it looked a bit lonely, so I put all three lengths up, which looked a lot better. Within an hour, two customers asked if they could buy it. I went back to the shop on Saturday morning with some donations, and the lady on the counter asked if I'd made the bunting. She said she'd had three people ask if they could buy it, and she hadn't sold it because there was no price on it! Also, she'd been informed that one of the volunteers had made it to decorate the shop, so she refused to sell it until she knew what to do. She suggested that I put a sign up saying it was not for sale, so I did. But I'm wondering whether I should whip up some more bunting to sell, and how much we should charge? One customer asked me if I'd make some for her and how much would I charge, and I said "Oh, about $5 a metre, I don't really know". She seemed to think that was okay. Do any of my readers have any suggestions?

4 comments:

Linens and Royals said...

$5 a metre sounds too cheap even if the bunting is quick to make but it is an op shop shop so I suppose you can't charge too much.
The pillow cases are very pretty, a great find.
Thursday is half price day at my local Salvos, I will be there.

Liz in Kansas said...

Those are really lovely pillow cases. They look like some I did waaaay back when. Did you learn to embroider on pillow cases? I did. Then moved on to tea towels and monogrammed sheets as I got better at it. Wish I had some of those pieces now!

Can't help you on pricing - that's my absolute worst skill.

Jane said...

Lovely pillowcases. Lot's of people sell bunting, look on etsy or similar and see how much they charge. Remember to cover your costs, even if the triangles themselves are made from stash or scraps, you still have to buy the tape etc

Wendy said...

I think $5 is way to cheap for your bunting. Even though it came from your stash, it took your time and you had to purchase the tape to string it with. Not only that, if you had to purchase the fabrics and not use stash it would be more out of pocket for you. You should figure in the cost of fabric, thread, tape and your time. And then decide if you want to sell them.