Handmade Pricing Calculator: Price Quilts, Crochet and Embroidery

Pick a preset or enter your own numbers. The calculator shows three honest prices side by side: the floor that pays your wage after fees, a cost-plus price, and the wholesale and retail prices from the classic multiplier rule, with a breakdown of where every dollar goes.

Your item

Start from a preset Throw quilt, pieced and machine quiltedQueen quilt, pieced and machine quiltedCrochet throw blanket, worsted yarnMachine embroidered shirt, left chestLined tote bag

Materials ($)

Hours

Wage ($/hr)

Overhead (%)

Fees (%)

Markup (%)

Wholesale multiplier

Retail multiplier

Your results

Wholesale

$1,254

Retail

$2,508

Floor: pays your wage after fees	$696.67
Cost-plus price after fees	$905.67

Per-item breakdown at retail

Materials	$120.00
Labor	$450.00
Overhead	$57.00
Fees at retail	$250.80
Profit beyond your wage	$1,630.20
You earn per hour at retail	$83.21
Per hour at cost-plus	$25.52

How do you price handmade items?

Every handmade pricing method starts in the same place: what it really costs you to make the item. Most underpricing happens here, because makers count the fabric or yarn and forget their time, the thread and needles that are used up, the electricity and the wear on a machine that cost hundreds or thousands of dollars.

The calculator builds cost in three parts:

• Materials: everything that goes into the item, at what you paid. Fabric, batting, thread, yarn, stabilizer, zippers, labels and packaging.
• Labor: hours times an hourly wage. Include cutting, pressing, finishing, photographing and listing, not just stitching. If you are unsure of your hours, use the craft project time calculator.
• Overhead: a percentage for the costs that are hard to assign to one item: needles, rotary blades, machine servicing, electricity, software, a booth fee or a website. Five to fifteen percent is a common starting point.

From that cost, the calculator works out three prices, each suited to a different kind of sale.

How is the handmade price calculated?

Here is the math for the default throw quilt, computed by the same function as the calculator:

1. Labor: 25 hours x $18 = $450.00.
2. Overhead: ($120 + $450.00) x 10 percent = $57.00.
3. Cost: $120 + $450.00 + $57.00 = $627.00.
4. Floor price (hourly method): cost divided by the share you keep after fees. $627.00 / 0.90 = $696.67. At this price you earn exactly your wage and nothing more.
5. Cost-plus: cost x (1 + 30 percent), divided by 0.90 for fees = $905.67. That leaves $25.52 per hour after materials, overhead and fees.
6. Wholesale and retail multipliers: cost x 2 = $1,254.00 wholesale, and wholesale x 2 = $2,508.00 retail. Selling direct at retail, fees take $250.80 and you earn $83.21 per hour.

The wholesale price is what a shop would pay you, and the retail price is what the shop charges its customer. The second doubling pays the shop's rent and staff. If you sell only direct, you can price anywhere between the floor and retail, and the gap between them is your room for sales, shipping promotions and the occasional mistake.

Which pricing method is right for quilts, crochet and embroidery?

The right method depends on the share of the cost that is labor. The table runs every preset through all three methods at 2x wholesale and 2x retail.

Look at the difference between the quilt and the shirt. The embroidered shirt costs $27.60 and is mostly the blank garment, so the multiplier gives a retail price of $110.40, and the cost-plus figure of $46.00 is often closer to what local customers pay. The throw quilt is mostly labor, which is why doubling twice lands at $2,508. Neither number is wrong. The multiplier tells you what the quilt would need to sell for through a shop that pays you fairly, and the floor tells you the least you can accept without working for free.

The practical rule many makers settle on: use multipliers for quick, materials-heavy items sold in quantity, such as the tote bag at a $112 wholesale price, and use cost-plus or a clear hourly floor for labor-heavy, one-of-a-kind items such as quilts and blankets. The guide to pricing handmade items covers market research and presentation in more depth.

How much should I pay myself per hour?

Wage is the most sensitive number in any handmade price. The table keeps the throw quilt's materials and hours and changes only the wage.

Every extra $5 an hour on a 25 hour quilt changes the cost by more than $130. That is why speed, not just price, drives handmade income: cutting the hours on each item raises your real hourly earnings at any price.

How do marketplace fees change handmade prices?

Percentage fees are charged on the whole sale price, including the part that pays you back for materials. To keep your earnings the same, divide by the share you keep rather than adding the fee percentage on top. Adding 10 percent to a $100 price gives $110, but a 10 percent fee on $110 is $11, which leaves $99. Dividing $100 by 0.9 gives $111.11, which leaves exactly $100 after the fee.

Marketplaces such as Etsy charge listing, transaction and payment processing fees, and craft fairs often charge a booth fee instead. Enter your total as a percentage of sales, and put fixed costs such as booth fees into overhead.

Which equipment actually raises handmade profit?

Once your prices cover your wage, the next lever is hours. On a quilt, quilting the top is often a third or more of the total time, and a midarm or sit-down longarm such as the Handi Quilter Amara ST 20 or the more affordable Juki TL-15 changes how much of a queen top you can quilt in an afternoon. For embroidery, a multi-needle machine like the Janome MB-7 removes manual thread changes, so each shirt takes less of your attention. For sewn goods, a serger such as the Juki MO-654DE sews and finishes seams in one pass. Before buying, the longarm cost calculator shows how many quilts it takes to pay a machine back.