Big, big, multiples sighs…the Sneetches are at it once more.  Dressmakers are being accused of “highway robbery” again. So that I can maintain a detached, calm stance, I am going to assume that is mainly directed at the BNs (big names).

It has not yet been said in the voy board post to which I am referring that “it is only embroidery for pete’s sake, not the artistic applique of not-so-long-ago!” Let me be clear here that I am in awe of the MANY appliqued works of art that were done without the benefit of digitizing. Susan Gowin’s work stuns me every time, and I drool over The Silverlode dresses. Amazing. I completely appreciate the time and artistic talent.

By the same token, all the embroidery that we are seeing on the dresses these days is equal in the amount of time and even talent that it takes to create the designs, digitize them well, and then stitch them out (ok, maybe there is no artistry in using a computerized machine, but it is still time intensive and takes mechanical understanding and skill). The look is different now, yes, but no less costly than the applique wonders of before. In fact, in terms of the embroidery itself, I would guess that there is in fact more embroidery on dresses now than ever before!

And that is not cheap. Why? Because good digitizing takes lots of time. But, unless you are a digitizer, how and why would you know that?

My sister-in-law is a crafter. She came to me to ask if she could use the embroidery machine. When she saw my confusion because I know she does not know how to use one, she said, “It’s easy, isn’t it? Don’t I just feed in a picture of what I want?” She is a smart person so she quickly understood it was not simple when I explained a bit, but it dawned on me that perhaps many folks assume that we ID dressmakers and embroiderers do just feed in the pictures and sit back. My favorite board comment has always been the one that stated dressmakers should not make so much money because all of their machines are computerized now…the implication being that we just throw all of the ingredients at the machines and they suck it up and spit a complete dress out the other end?!?!?! I wish!!!

Now, there is something called the “auto-digitize” function in many, if not all, of the digitizing software packages. However, this is rarely a successful way to create good embroidery files.  Auto-digitizing leaves tell-tale signs that affect the integrity of the embroidery.  Good digitizers use it rarely if at all.  (I did a post about auto-digitizing here.) 

When I first started my digitizing education, I looked carefully at the designs I had bought for myself.  I deconstructed them and learned mainly what not to do…don’t use auto-digitize!  Many (most?) of the celtic knot design sets out there are created using that auto button.  How can I tell?  Because the knot file itself is full of strange thread detours, junctions, shapes & lines, and the embroidery is just as asymmetrical and mis-shapen as the original hand drawn sources found in the clip-art sources…yep, clip art.  But, the open secret in embroidery of using clip art as a starting point is a post for a different day. 

I know that the economy is bad. I have so many clients buying digitized designs so that they can make their own dresses. Some of them have me do the embroidery for them because they do not have the equipment or big enough hoops. My Taoknitter Arts email box is hopping with correspondence with people of all experience levels wanting to do for themselves. It’s great!

But there have been several exchanges, a few of them very lengthy, with people who have asked for estimates based on some pretty intensive design re-working. They also wanted me to stitch them out. When I gave them the estimates, however, these people disappeared. I have been mulling this over…why would folks assume a full dress of dense stitching would only cost $20?

I asked one of my outspoken dressmaker friends (she is also my embroidery tester) what she thought about this.  I have edited a bit to protect the innocent, but this is what she had to say:

When I was looking at your site the other day, I made note of the prices. I thought, $30 for this bodice design, $20 for the matching panel and probably another $20 for whatever I decided to put on the sleeve. Total: $70.00. When I bought just the drawing for a design from a well-known ID designer a while back, I paid $50 for just the rights to use the design and then knew I would have to have it digitized. Lucky me was in the position of being your official tester already, so I was testing it for you anyway, but if I had to send that off to 24-hour digitizing.com, or some other digitizing company, can you imagine what I would have paid to have JUST the front panel done?? I figure $75-100 and that doesn’t count the front bodice or shawl clip.

The industry standard for stitching out a design is $1 per 1000 stitches.  Folks who know that using metallic thread can be tricky charge $1.50 per 1000 stitches when using metallic threads.  This includes the cost of the hoop stabilizers and machine use.  Some people charge a set-up fee which can encompass the digitizing or just doing the test stitch outs before the actual run.  I do not charge a set-up fee…if there is a digitizing fee I say so up front and that is usually only when it is an exclusive custom design.

Digitizing fees are more which makes sense because bad digitizing gives you a bad product!  I have seen fees as low as $2 per 1000 stitches but those also seem to ask for perfect vector art work which leads me to believe they try to use auto-digitize as much as possible…or they have slave labor!  My fees run $3-4.50 depending on the artwork (hand-drawn takes more time to deal with).  $4 is about standard while I have seen some places that charge as much as $7.50 per 1000 stitches.

Someone just wrote this past week to get an estimate, and because of my friend, I was able to point out that while the stitch-out of an entire stitch-dense design from my site might run $350 to $450, if I had to digitize the entire design for her, it would cost at least twice that and therein lies the expense for solo dresses!  It takes TIME to create, digitize, manipulate, re-size, test, revise, test again, revise again, and then finally stitch out the design onto the dress pieces.  Believe me, if I could get Dr. Suess to make me a perfect embroidery contraption into which I could feed all of the elements and then sit back as it whirred and chugged and then belched out a finished product with the current necessary bling on its belly button, I would!

I do realize that this is a scary time.  It is for all of us.  I just wish the Sneetches would ask for info before labeling ID dressmakers as thieves.  I can guarantee that it is a rare non-BN dressmaker who makes even sufficient money doing this.  I certainly hope they exist.