When planning a creative gift for a family member, you need to make sure it is something that they will really like.

What would you do if your mother picked out some fabric colors that you knew wouldn’t look good, but she told you she didn’t want your opinion?

That is what happened to the tailor in this story, so she told her mom that she could pay for the fabric and she would make the gift exactly what she wants.

Check it out.

AITA for telling my mother to pay when she demanded I keep my opinion regarding a shared present that I was making

I, 26, am semi professional tailor.

I picked up sewing when I was 7 and I’ve been expanding my knowledge ever since as a hobby.

I do custom orders as a side hassle.

My SIL, 34F, recently gave birth to my niece.

She has requirements for her baby’s stuff to be in muted, soft, pastel colors.

Although, ideally SIL doesn’t want unrequested gifts (she shared a to-buy list with us when she was pregnant).

That would be a great gift.

My mother, 56F, wants to gift her a decorative pillow because my brother (SILs husband) liked to fight pillows when he was a baby.

She requested I make it because she wants a design embroidered on it and my sewing machine has an embroidery software and hoops where can load custom designs.

Mother requested I pick the design and I tasked my fiancé 25, to do the design since they are a professional illustrator.

The design got approved and they vectorized it for me.

Then the colors got picked.

It is good that everyone is on the same page.

We agreed on yellow and we adjusted the design to be colored.

Again, all was approved.

Mother then decided to buy a fabric.

Today, she finally showed me the fabric.

It’s banana peel yellow.

The design will blend in since it’s in very soft, pastel colors that are easy on the eye.

Always trust the experts.

I said this fabric won’t work and offered fabrics I had on hand in the colors off-white and creams.

After all, we’re talking about a background color to a pillow with an embroidery.

I argued a bit with her when she dropped “I want you to service me without your opinion”.

I responded with “then pay me,” since I was doing this pro-bono.

Ironically, this isn’t a stand alone case to the point of I have a clause in my ToS and in the commission contract stating that “if you want lack of opinion there’s 50% upcharge to handle the time prepared for ‘This doesn’t look as I imagined’ which is often the case afterwards”.

That could be very frustrating.

I can follow instructions to a T but if you want a pencil skirt and give me a specific pattern I’ll not tailor it to your specific body and it will not fit properly (just an example of what I had to do in the past).

So AITA for telling my mother to pay when she demanded I keep my opinion regarding a shared present I was making?

And one last thing if that was commissioned by an external party it would cost 70€ for the illustration and 40€ in materials and additionally about 30€ for labor.

AITA?

Sometimes giving family members a service at a discount or free can really backfire.

Let’s see what the people in the comments think about this.

Always pay family for services.

Sometimes you just need to agree with people.

Here is someone who says to remove yourself from the situation.

This commenter suggests doing her own gift.

This person thinks the color will be awful.

Mom needs to listen to her daughter.

And her daughter-in-law, if we’re being honest.

If you liked that story, read this one about grandparents who set up a college fund for their grandkid because his parents won’t, but then his parents want to use the money to cover sibling’s medical expenses.