Image courtesy of Calico Gals Quilt Shop in Syracuse, New York.
At h+h americas 2025, Mark Hyland, CEO of HandiQuilter, presented a summary of the results of the 2025 Quilter’s Survey. (See 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2024 results.) This is a large study of consumer behavior and sentiment in the quilting industry, data that is otherwise very hard to access. Major funding for the survey was provided by Handi Quilter.
Data for the survey was collected in February 2025 (before the tariff announcements). Over 1.8 million quilters were invited to participate via email through five partner brands: Tula Pink, AccuQuilt, Golden Peak Media’s Quilting Daily, Superior Threads, Connecting Threads, American Quilter’s Society, Handi Quilter, and Pro Stitcher. Study design partners included EY Parthenon and Emperitas. Like in years past, the average time to complete the entire survey was just over an hour.
Over 30,000 responses were recorded (about 7,000 fewer than last year), providing nearly 100 million data points. 97% of responses were from North America (95% from the US and 5% from Canada), plus 3% from other countries. As in prior years, no demographic data based on race or ethnicity was shared.
The average quilter
According to the survey data, the average quilter is female and in her 60s. She’s retired and in a household with an income of greater than $75K (up from last year when the annual household income was $70K). She describes herself as comfortable with technology. The average quilter has 10 years of quilt-making under her belt and spends six hours a week working on quilts. She starts 11 projects a year, finishing 9. Most of these finishes are small projects, such as lap-sized quilts, and are in the traditional style. She owns four different sewing machines.
A softening market
The quilting market appears to be softening somewhat. Last year’s survey estimated that the 2025 annualized revenue of the quilting industry would be $4.958 billion. This year’s results, however, fell short of that estimate at $4.5 billion. Still, this is up significantly from 2000 when it was just $1.8 billion, 2010 when it was $3.6 billion, and 2020 when it was $4.2 billion, although the rate of growth appears to be slowing.
The industry now has 9-11 million active consumers, a number that’s stayed consistent over the past 10 years. This year, 18% of respondents indicated they are new to quilting, up from 11% last year.
Shopping and education
Like last year, quilters are looking for free video content for inspiration and education, with YouTube being the platform of choice. The average quilter describes herself as at an intermediate skill level.
Increasing costs due to inflation are causing quilters to use their stash more rather than acquiring new fabric.
When it comes to choosing where to shop, availability and fabric assortment as well as quality all rank higher than price. 64% of quilters prefer to buy quilting supplies at their local shop, up 3% from last year, while 13% prefer to buy online. For fabric and thread, 51% of quilters prefer to shop locally, while 22% prefer to shop online.
Quilters primarily purchase both fabric and supplies from local quilt shops. Overall, shopping locally is steadily increasing.
At Craft Industry Alliance, we collect all available consumer research studies on the crafts industry. Members, access them right here.
Abby Glassenberg
Co-founder
Abby co-founded Craft Industry Alliance and now serves as its president. She’s a sewing pattern designer, teacher, and journalist. She’s dedicated to creating an outstanding trade association for the crafts industry. Abby lives in Wellesley, Massachusetts.
“without YouTube being the platform of choice?” Is this correct or is YouTube the platform of choice?
That’s a typo! It should be “with.” I’ll fix it right now! Thank you.
Thank you for continuing to gather and share this information – It is interesting that the consistency in the demographics continues to stay relatively the same. I hope that there continues to be some attention on how the industry can support getting materials and tools into underserved or low income populations and to also actively engage youth. I have worked to build these accesses in the Kansas City Marketplace and believe we need to strive to expand the reach.
Interesting to see the big drop of people responding. I wonder how that skewed the survey results. Maybe those “sponsors” don’t resonate as much with quilters as they think they do. Could be that more quilters are recognizing that real quilting is more than buying stuff. I have done the survey for years, but have been finding that it is less and less relevant to most of the quilters I am around. Businesses who are relying on the survey to make financial decisions might want to keep that in mind.
I agree. The only Sponsor that I am affiliated with is Golden Media. I don’t remember if I responded to the survey or not. Not sure how to reach more independent quilters, though. Pretty sure Quilts, Inc. sponsored it in years past. With 40,000 people going to their Quilt Festival, they would be good ones to include. Also perhaps the Modern Quilt Guild.
How can we see the results for the entire survey?
The results of the entire survey are not available. Handi Quilter shares just this summary.
There are many fiber artists who would never call themselves “quilters” yet use many of the same skills and materials. Because they do not work on traditional “quilt” projects, they would likely not reply to this survey, yet they use threads and materials from the same sources. Perhaps you should consider somehow including them in tour survey language?
I would love to see mention of the under 40 demographic. I seem to meet a lot of young people who are taking up needle arts, including quilting, & I think they could be a boon for the industry in coming years.
Survey is interesting but pretty biased. I teach sewing & am seeing more young people (22-39) being very interested in basic sewing skills which are leading to quilting basics. Most of these young sewers are not home owners so they rely on sewing lounges or classes where they can rent sewing machines or the worst in cheap sewing machines. If we want our craft to survive, we need to encourage the next generation to love sewing, fabric and the fulfillment of creating fabric art.