How Much to Charge for Longarm Quilting, Binding and a Quilt

October 23, 2026 · Selling products and running the numbers

How much to charge for longarm quilting: multiply the quilt top’s width by its length, multiply the square inches by your price per square inch, and charge your minimum if that comes out lower. Then test the result against the hourly floor your own year needs, and against the machine. In the illustrative example below, a 60 by 72 inch top is 4,320 square inches; at $0.0250 a square inch it comes to $108.00, or $43.20 an hour on the frame against a $42.65 floor.

Every figure here belongs to one made-up quilter. None of it is a going rate, a fabric price or a claim about how long quilting takes. The method is what carries over to your own numbers.

The longarm quilting price formula

longarm charge  = MAX(width x length x price per sq in, minimum)
charge per hour = longarm charge / hours on the frame
hourly floor    = (income / (1 - tax set-aside) + business costs)
                  / paid hours a year
rate that pays  = (floor x hours + machine share) / square inches

Step 1: the hourly floor

The example quilter wants $30,000 a year kept after a 20% tax set-aside and carries $6,000 of business costs, so the year needs $43,500.00. They spend 25 hours a week at the machine and cutting table for 48 weeks, and 15% of those hours go to loading, threading, cleaning and practice that no customer pays for. That leaves 1,020 paid hours, and a floor of $42.65 per paid hour. Ignore the unpaid hours and the floor looks like $36.25. With 5 more hours a week of messages, intake and shipping, the quilter keeps $20.83 per hour actually worked. The freelance hourly rate calculator works the same split for any trade.

Step 2: a longarm quilting price calculator, by hand

The example charges $0.0250 a square inch with a $90.00 minimum. The minimum stops applying at 3,600 square inches (the minimum divided by the rate), so the 4,320 square inch top is charged by size: $108.00. Over 2.5 hours on the frame, loading to unloading, that is $43.20 an hour, $0.55 an hour above the floor. The rate that pays exactly the floor on those hours is $0.0247 a square inch.

The insight: the floor leaves out the machine

That check passes, and it still misses something. The floor in step 1 covers the quilter and the business, but not the longarm itself. The example’s machine cost $12,000, plus $1,500 for the frame, delivery and setup, less $4,000 expected back when it is sold: $9,500. Spread over 60 customer quilts a year for 5 years, 300 quilts, that is $31.67 a quilt.

The $108.00 quilt leaves only $1.38 above the floor pay for its 2.5 hours. Take the machine’s share out of the charge instead and the quilt pays $30.53 an hour, well under the floor. Take out $6.00 of thread too and the charge falls $4.63 short of the floor pay before the machine gets anything.

The pack’s machine payback sheet works the example on an average across the quilter’s book: $150.00 a customer quilt, thread charges included, for an average of 2.5 hours. After thread and the floor, each quilt leaves $37.38, and 255 quilts pay the machine off, 4.25 years in. If every quilt were charged like the $108.00 one in step 2, the machine would never pay back. To pay the floor and the machine share on this quilt, the rate rounded up to a hundredth of a cent is $0.0321 a square inch, a charge of $138.67. Whether thread is billed separately is your policy; either way, price the machine somewhere.

How much to charge for quilt binding

Binding is priced by the inch. A 60 by 72 inch quilt has a 264 inch edge; with the example’s 12 inch allowance for joins and corners, that is 276 inches of binding, or 7 strips of 2.5 inches cut across 42 inch fabric. Those strips use 0.49 yards at $12.00 a yard: $5.83 of fabric.

At $0.15 an inch, the binding charge is $41.40. Over 2 hours to cut, join, attach and finish, it leaves $17.78 an hour after fabric, less than half the floor. The price per inch that pays the floor is $0.3302, a binding charge of $91.14. A per-inch price set without the hours next to it is easy to set too low.

How to price a quilt you make start to finish

For a handmade quilt the same size, start with materials. With 4 inches extra a side, the back is 68 by 80 inches: 2 panels of 42 inch fabric seamed side by side. The top adds 25% for seams and trimming, and every cut rounds up to the 0.25 yard the example buys.

Hours by stage, from the example’s own estimate: design and cutting 5, piecing 16, quilting 4, binding and label 3, 28 in all. With the machine’s share and shipping:

That is $0.3765 a square inch of finished quilt, and the quilter’s time is 73% of the price. The deposit covers materials and shipping before the first cut. The 15% margin is profit on top of a floor that already pays the quilter; the markup vs margin chart shows why a 15% margin is not a 15% markup.

Did the quilt pay?

Say a quilt like it sold for $1,500 and took 31 hours, with $150.00 of materials, $22.00 of shipping and a 3% card fee. After those and the machine share it leaves $1,251.33, or $40.37 an hour, below the $42.65 floor. The price that pays exactly the floor on those hours was $1,573.01. Logging real hours by stage is what makes the next price right.

How these were calculated

The floor is income / (1 - tax set-aside) plus business costs, over hours a week x (1 - unpaid share) x weeks. The longarm charge is the larger of square inches x rate and the minimum. The machine share is (price + setup - resale) over quilts a year x years. Binding length is the perimeter plus the allowance; strips are that length over the fabric’s usable width, rounded up; fabric is costed by the inches of yardage used. Yardage for top, backing and batting is rounded up to the smallest cut bought. A price is cost / (1 - margin). The floor, materials and machine share are carried to the cent, as the spreadsheet shows them. Every figure was computed twice, once by the code behind the product below and once by an independent program that adds the paid hours week by week and counts strips and cuts one at a time, and the two agree. All inputs are illustrative, not market rates or measured times. None of this is financial, legal or tax advice.

To run this on your own year, quilts and prices, the pack below has eight linked calculators, from the hourly floor to t-shirt quilts, machine payback and a check on whether a finished quilt paid.