I don't normally rant, but today I must. I need to get this off my chest.
A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, I made a beautiful applique quilt top. I knew that my machine quilting skills were not anywhere near the level needed for this quilt. Now my most wonderful local machine quilter and I are on the same page when it comes to design and the amount of custom quilting that should be on a quilt. But I know it's alot of hours and she can make way more doing the all-overs, so I didn't want to ask her to do this quilt.
So I searched the web and found someone who I really liked her style. I saw her quilts in person at a show and loved them! She's won many awards at big shows and to my eys, the quilting was perfect. So I reached out to her and she agreed to take my quilt and work her magic on it. Over the next ELEVEN months, each time I would send her a note asking when I could expect my quilt, each time the answer was "there are just a few ahead of you". Finally after nearly a year, I asked her to send the quilt back.
She was apologetic of course and explained that there were family issues. Now why couldn't she tell me that, instead of "there are just a few ahead of you"??
So my search began again. I had a handful of quilters I thought were wonderful and contacted them. 2 of them said they could not take my quilt because of other committment. Ok, I can understand that, they were being honest.
One of them said she could do it. This was November of last year. She said she would have by April 15th. So off my quilt goes. April came and went and no quilt comes back. She says "I'm way behind schedule". She says July but more likely August.
What's today? nearly the end of September? Now she tells me maybe December or January. She is very busy doing quilts for someone with a pattern company, fabric line, etc. and everyone else gets pushed to the back of the line. Nice...is that how you treat people? Is that a lesson you'd want to teach your kid?
Now I ask you, what would your boss do if you made a committment and then missed it by a year? would she say, oh that's ok? Would your kid's teacher accept homework a year late because some other more important teacher pre-empted them ? What ever happened to making a committment and sticking to it?
Professional Machine quilters are mostly very talented, very professional people, but clearly, there are those who don't value their customers. Now I will not name either of the two ladies above, but I hope you never run into them.
Sad and disappointed and wondering what I should have done differently....
Megan