The new Quilter’s Survey 2022 funded by Premier Needle Arts is here and we are in it.
You can see it in the above image. If you want to see the a summary of the whole survey, you can find it here. (Thanks to Craft Industry Alliance)
In case you aren’t able to access images, here’s a quick summary. We are:
- Female
- In our 60’s
- Mostly Retired
- Been quilting for over 10 years
- Work on 10-12 projects a year
- Spend 6 hours or more per week
In addition, the quilt market continues to increase, as it has for the last 10 years. Somewhere around 8-10% of us are new quilters. (New quilters are usually over 50 years old.)
We decide where to shop based on location and fabric selection. (I think we all knew this.) We love our local quilt shops and prefer to shop there.
However, e-commerce continues to expand. And we are using YouTube and other social media channels for How-To info…which may say something about the future of in-person classes.
A missed opportunity for knowledge, in my humble opinion, is the truly social aspect of quilting. The origin of quilting was the sewing bee, the “coming together”. We love our quilt guilds and other communal activities. I would be curious about how this aspect is changing. Or if it is changing at all.
The survey, of course, is designed to help the industry understand where the market is going.
But I will say this much: For the last 10 years I have been hearing about how the quilt market continues to grow. Yet, I’ve seen small quilt shop after small quilt shop close and there just are not others waiting in the wings to pick up the slack.
While the market may be growing, the quilt shops we love are not surviving. I think it is partly because of the pandemic, partly because of e-commerce, partly because of the slow end of of the baby boomer wealth, and finally, fabric is expensive. Cotton and resources and the supply chain are just not getting easier in a world where resources are finite.
Where does that leave us?
I don’t know.
But today I’m going to work on one of my lap quilts and carry on supporting the one local quilt shop in my area that is still thriving.
I don’t think we can change the trajectory, but we can do our best.