Objective: Select and scope a single signature quilt that showcases your Janome Memory Craft 8200 skills and is realistic to produce and sell for profit.
A signature project is the quilt that becomes your calling card for resale: it must be meaningful to make, repeatable enough to price, and matched to what your buyers actually want. Choose along three axes. First, skill showcase: pick techniques you command on the MC8200, such as the AcuFeed Flex walking foot for straight-line and ruler work, free-motion with the feed dogs dropped, or decorative built-in stitches for the binding or sashing. Second, market fit: decide who buys it (craft-fair shopper, nursery gift, modern home decor) and what size and palette sells there. Third, feasibility: a lap quilt (about 50 by 60 inches) is the resale sweet spot because it fits the MC8200's harp space when rolled, uses roughly 3 to 4 yards of fabric plus backing and batting, and finishes in a weekend. Avoid king-size for a first signature piece; the bulk fights the machine throat and eats your profit in hours. Set a target price by adding materials cost to your hourly rate times estimated hours, then check it against comparable quilts online. If the number is too high for your market, simplify the piecing or shrink the size rather than underpricing your labor. Capture all of this in a short written brief so Units 6's later lessons build on a fixed target instead of a moving idea.
Example: Maria wants a market-fair signature quilt. She picks a modern patchwork lap quilt, 50x60 inches, in a three-color palette. Showcase technique: AcuFeed Flex walking foot for grid quilting plus a decorative feather stitch on the binding. Market: local home-decor shoppers. Feasibility: ~3.5 yards top fabric, 3.5 yards backing, crib-size batting; estimated 9 hours. Cost: $55 materials + 9 hours x $25 = $280; comparable quilts sell $240-$320, so she prices at $295. Her brief: 'A 50x60 three-color modern grid lap quilt, walking-foot quilted with a decorative-stitch binding, for home-decor buyers, priced at $295.'
Try it: Write your own one-paragraph project brief naming: (1) quilt type and finished size, (2) target buyer and palette, (3) the two MC8200 techniques you'll showcase, (4) estimated materials list, and (5) a target price calculated as materials cost + (estimated hours x your hourly rate). Keep it to 4-6 sentences.