The rubber has just hit the road for me. A friend has offered to buy The Promises Of Spring since I mentioned in another blogpost that I was wondering what to do with it:
So, what is this quilt worth?
As noted in the post by Hunter's Design studio, this is an entirely different value to what I can get for it. I can do some rough maths to work out a value for the quilt, probably using Molli's template. However, the sale of the quilt poses a question about how I value myself - which, frankly, is the more challenging question. Numbers are easy; self-worth is difficult.
The question I have is how to approach this. Do I put out a spreadsheet laying out the price of the effort I put in (approximated because I didn't bother to record how long it took)? Do I just give her a number and wait for agreement or disagreement? Do I say "this is how much it cost me to make, this is what I'm happy to sell it for"? The friend is buying it for her daughter, and if she's not rolling in it, she's not destitute either.
I'm more than happy to gift a large portion of it - I've given quilts before and not said how much they cost; I've indicated how much quilts cost in casual conversation, but I've never had to have the conversation about how much my quilts are WORTH. And it's one thing to know that my 'hobby work' should be valued as much as my 'office work' (for which I am paid in easy excess of $50/hr) - certainly my 'hobby work' has brought considerably more pleasure to myself and others than my 'office work' tends to - and yet another to actually sit down and value my efforts.
It won't be easy. But maybe it's time.
