Determine Your Price Worksheet (Standard & Metric)
Last week I wrote about pricing finished grocery bags for sale, and afterward I started thinking about how to price all the different items made from my patterns. But let's be realistic--I'm never going to get around to doing it for each one individually!
However, I did do something even more useful, and far more simple than having a spreadsheet for each individual pattern...I made a spreadsheet that will calculate the price of sewn items using just a few variables.
I'm very excited about this spreadsheet! It took several drafts to boil it down to just the basics, get the formulas to work, fix those darn #DIV0! errors, and make it look nice. But it very enlightening to get an accurate picture of pricing, so it was well worth the effort.
The spreadsheet is based on sewn items that use exterior fabric, lining fabric, interfacing, and interlining. You can change the supplies to anything you want--as long as it is something measured in either yards or meters. You can also modify the spreadsheet if you know the basics of how to insert cells, copy formulas, etc.
There are two sheets--one for standard (inches) and one for metric (centimeters).
You need to input just 6 main things:
• Width of fabric used (read below)
• Height of fabric used (read below)
• Total fabric width
• Cost per yard/meter
• Your hourly wage
• How long it took to make the item
To determine the width & height, you probably want to lay your pattern pieces out and measure. The amount of fabric you really NEED vs. what a pattern shows as required is often going to be different. The pattern pieces might require fabric with at least 18" of height, so the pattern shows 1/2 yard. But the pieces don't use up the entire width, and you end up with quite a bit of left over fabric. You could just include the extra fabric, but later you'll probably use it for something else, so over time overestimating will skew your numbers.
It is an OpenOffice spreadsheet, but will also work in Google Docs. It works in some versions of Excel and not in others. I'm not sure why, but think it might have something to do with the computer operating system. Unless you have a commercial version of Excel, MS doesn't want you using their product for business purposes anyway. You might consider downloading OpenOffice.
Save the document to your computer and then open it so it doesn't open as "read only". You will need to add your inputs and sometimes downloads open automatically in "read only" mode.
Happy pricing, selling, and making a living with your sewing skills!
