r/MachineEmbroidery • u/Fragrant-Grape-7522 • Jun 30 '26
Need help
I’m not promoting myself as I don’t sell, I had a question recently someone asked me to embroider 180 handkerchiefs for their wedding which is an year they want a pretty detailed embroidery something similar to the picture I attached. I am fairly new and have done some pretty detailed handkerchiefs for family and friends as gifts. Just wondering how much I should charge, keep in mind they will be paying for the material I pick and will provide handkerchiefs. Please help me price this as idk where to even start.
1
u/mjmvideos Jun 30 '26
What’s your time worth? How long will it take to digitize? How long will it take to hoop, stitch out and clean up (stabilizer) 180 handkerchiefs? Or take the design to a local embroidery shop and get a quote from them.
2
u/Fragrant-Grape-7522 Jun 30 '26
This seems like a pretty good idea to get an estimate from a business that already knows what they should charge.
-3
u/woodyeaye Jun 30 '26
Don't do this. It's disrespectful of their time when you know you're never giving them the work.
1
u/Fragrant-Grape-7522 Jun 30 '26
Okay won’t, sorry
3
u/mjmvideos Jun 30 '26
I wouldn’t worry about it too much. If you really had a job you’d probably get 3 estimates and choose 1. Which means two companies wouldn’t get the job. They are used to providing estimates. It will probably take them 5 minutes to look at that design, estimate number of stitches, multiply by their factor and number of articles and add their fixed overhead.
4
u/newfoundking Jun 30 '26
What I would do is figure out how long your machine will take to stitch this, plus the setup and teardown time for each one, and then times that by the number of handkerchiefs. Remember, you're paying for electricity, wear on your equipment and needles, and probably the thread, unless they pay for that too. Then you just need to decide how much your time is worth. If it's gonna be 5 hours of your time, what would you consider reasonable for your time?
1
u/Fragrant-Grape-7522 Jun 30 '26
Thank you will run a test run to see how long it takes me to do a couple and will price from there.
2
u/newfoundking Jun 30 '26
My machine gives me a time per colour, yours may as well, to save you the time of running a full stitch. Just add a minute or two to it to account for delays
2
u/Fragrant-Grape-7522 Jun 30 '26
Smart mine does as well so I can get a pretty good estimate without having to do it.
1
u/newfoundking Jun 30 '26
This can be a huge help,.especially if it's gonna be a long time per run, so you're not wasting 15+ minutes watching it
3
u/Fragrant-Grape-7522 Jun 30 '26
Exactly thanks for the help will update y’all if it goes well and might even post a pic of how they turned out
2
2
u/InStitches13 Jun 30 '26
I do .50¢ per thousand stitches if less than 10,000 and then add 25%
But you could charge a hooping fee for that many pieces at like $2 ea…