I am not a professional seamstress by any means. My forte is gloves. But upon occasion a theater buddy will tap me to alter very special pieces and for those I do charge hourly. I do not announce that my rate is hourly. I use it to calculate the set fee.
Now mind you, for web work and development of applications I charge 75/hr. There is no way in heck I would charge that for what I do. I do not do beading or embroidery. THAT stuff is worth the higher rates. My stuff is more along the lines of 12/hr. Gloves ... I do not take commissions for those for pay or from anyone I do not know. But if I did, I could not sell a pair for less than 200/pr. The last one was a wedding gown from the 30's. It was OMG gorgeous. The silk was heavy and thick, and the only reason why I said yes. Had it been a very fine silk I would have said no cause it would not have held up. The first thing I had to do was sit with the dress to figure it all out so I told her that there was an initial consultation charge of 50.00 to spend a day with the dress to assess if I can even work with it. This involved talking to her, seeing her in it as is, seeing what she wanted it to look like afterwards, then testing the seams. Yes, testing the seams. I needed to see if the dress had been altered before and if so what thread they used. It had been altered before and they used cotton instead of silk thread. The seams popped immediatly. Thankfully the cotton thread was of a darker color than the silk thread so it was easy to find. I do not announce what the hourly rate is. I use it as a calculation of the cost and give a set price based on it. Now when I was done she decided to give me an extra 100 on top of the total fee cause she said that other person she went to previously wanted 3 times what I charged her and I did it in half the time. I know why that person did that, they were anticipating that all the seams were going to have to be redone thus taking the entire dress apart. So yeah, had I had to do that, my price would have been the same as the other seamstress. But I did not want to tell her that. It was a one time gig. A wedding dress for her wedding. :) > ----- Original Message ----- > > Dear Listees, > I have been asked by some folks to make some costumes for them. > Problem is,I've only worked in community theatre before and that > doesn't pay anything (about $300 per show). For those of you that > sewing as a do business, how much do you charge for sewing? > Do you charge by the job or the hour? Any help in this > would be greatly appreciated. > Sharon C. > > Chiara Francesca Ansteorra _______________________________________________ h-costume mailing list [email protected] http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
