Are Custom Orders Worth It?

One of the listings in my Etsy shop is for a custom order of my quilted patchwork placemats. I had one order for them before Christmas, which went very smoothly because 1. the customer had very little preferences and 2. they ordered well before Christmas, and I wasn't working on anything else at the time.

Lately I had another order, and while I encountered no major show-stoppers, it made me rethink that listing.

The specially personalized placemat in the set

Don't get me wrong, the customer was nothing but pleasant and complimentary to work with. The experience just showed me things that could go wrong!

The biggest thing that did "go wrong" was my stress and anxiety levels, and admittedly those are my own issues to manage. That was the result of a perfect storm of events: I received the order right before the Husband departed on a nearly 6-day golf trip out of town...and my left thumb, right forefinger, and right middle finger tips all cracked open. Deep, painful cracks that took forever to heal, and to top it off, the thumb became infected. Sewing (and every other task) was absolute, miserable torture as I plugged on through the physical pain not to mention the distractions from holding down the fort alone.

It's healed from the infection and already on the overall mend in this photo.

It's a weird feeling to have something that normally brings you a lot of joy, become something that you dread.

But I persevered! The customer suggested some fabric themes that I didn't have--luckily she didn't mind that--she also asked for one that I did have, but she didn't care for it. I got worried as she happily threw out ideas, as I did online searching and wondered how much running around I'd have to do (not to mention how much money I'd spend), but in the end she settled on what I had on hand. Whew!! I sewed my very last chicken square into the corner of a placemat, got the placemat nearly finished, and then she asked if the chicken could be in the middle (eek!), but she didn't mind when I said it was already sewed (whew!)

The personalization was another "uh oh" moment. I'd sent her this photo of a flower panel I had:

...and she said she wanted the zinnia block as her personal placemat. I didn't realize that she didn't realize the flower names were printed on the fabric, so when she asked if her name could be put "in the middle", first we had to figure out the misunderstanding, and then I had to figure out how else to make the placemat!

My solution on the fly: Cut out a smaller square from the panel than originally intended, and surround it with corresponding colors. Throw in a couple plain black blocks, and cut blocks out of the matching flower border on the panel, and voila, a patchwork version that could still be personalized.

Once again I was lucky that the customer heartily approved of the idea when I sent these pictures to her!

Bear in mind that this entire time, my sewing room was also occupied by psycho panting dogs and hyper-chattering children, as I described in this post a few days ago. No distractions or anything, you know!

Finally, I got to the point of embroidering the customer's name! Hooray! But guess what happened?!

Noooooooooo!!

There's a first time for everything, including a broken needle! I dug through the pile of stuff that came with my embroidery machine, and mercifully, they'd included extra needles. Whew!!! Now I know how to change out a needle, and am back in business!

The Husband came home late that same afternoon, so that evening, I poured wine and continued to work.

Spilling wine would've been the cherry on top of the rough week, so luckily that didn't happen.

I'm not sure whether to credit two rather large glasses of wine, or the Husband's return, but that was the most fun I'd had all week in sewing, hahahahaha.

At last I was done!!

I've seen people on Etsy forums say they stopped offering custom orders after dealing with difficult customers, and after this experience I'm really on the fence. On one hand, she was fun to work with, and having to re-create the zinnia placemat design gave me inspiration for how to make placemats out of the rest of that flower fabric. But on the other hand, I'd normally have never tried to fit that much sewing into a week when the Husband was gone. It definitely overloaded my plate without any choice on my part.

I was lucky that this customer wasn't overly picky and wasn't in a rush, and it was kind of a freak thing that that perfect storm of circumstances all happened at once. But still...maybe best to avoid a repeat by taking down that listing and doing custom work via message request only, so I can tell people before they buy that it takes me awhile to make something, and that I'm not going to great lengths to get certain specialty fabrics (or that they'll have to pay extra for something like that).

Does anybody else have similar experiences with doing custom work? How did it go? What did you decide to do in the end?

Happy NeedleworkMonday to everyone!!