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What to charge for a handmade quilt = materials + labor + professional quilting. This calculator itemizes all three for any quilt size — real yardage at your fabric price, your hours at an honest rate, and longarm quilting at the per-square-inch rates the industry actually uses.
Suggested price for this throw / lap quilt: $635 – $885
Materials
$136
≈ 9.75 yd fabric (top 5 + backing 4 + binding 0.65) plus batting
Labor
$500
25 hrs × $20/hr — the high end adds 50% for skill and design
Professional quilting
—
quilted in your own hours above
A commission should never price below materials + longarm cost — that's the floor where you pay to work. Local markets vary; treat the range as a starting point, not a rule.
Whatever the market in your area says, one rule holds everywhere: never price a commission below materials plus out-of-pocket quilting costs. Below that line you are paying to work. Above it, the question is only how your time is valued — and “free” is a habit that's much easier to start than to end. If a buyer balks at an honest price, the answer isn't a discount; it's a smaller quilt.
Price it as materials + labor + professional quilting. Materials alone commonly run $150–$400 for a bed-size quilt at retail fabric prices; add your hours at an honest rate (working quilters commonly use $15–$35 per hour) and any longarm quilting fee. That's why handmade bed quilts legitimately price in the many hundreds of dollars — a queen with 40 hours of work in it is a $900–$1,400 quilt, not a $200 one.
In materials only: roughly $80–$150 for a throw and $200–$400 for a queen, at typical quilt-shop fabric prices ($10–$15 per yard) including backing, batting, and binding. Sale fabric, stash fabric, and wide-back backing all pull the number down; designer fabric and custom longarm quilting push it up. The calculator above itemizes it for your actual numbers.
Because the materials are real and the hours are long. A queen quilt contains 15–20 yards of fabric and batting before a single seam is sewn, plus 30–60 hours of skilled work. At minimum wage that labor alone exceeds the price of most store comforters. A handmade quilt isn't competing with mass-produced bedding — it's a textile that took someone a week of full-time work.
Longarm quilting is priced by the square inch: commonly around 2–3 cents for edge-to-edge designs and 4 cents and up for custom work, with most shops setting a minimum charge. A queen top at 2.5 cents per square inch runs about $240. Binding, backing prep, and thread are often billed separately — see our longarm cost calculator for the full breakdown.
Charge materials at minimum — always. Many quilters use a friends-and-family rate of materials plus a reduced hourly labor charge, and reserve gifts for occasions they choose themselves. The habit to avoid is 'materials only, forever': it teaches everyone that your work is free and makes it harder to charge honestly when a stranger asks for a commission.