Quilt Label – Page 2 – OccasionalPiece

This is my latest Schnibbles quilt: Spoolin’ Around. Sherri, Sinta and I assume, Carrie, pick the Schnibbles pattern we are going to use, but then we all go to town putting it together in our own inimatable way.

I changed up the borders a little, because I wanted mine to all line up a little more, creating a different corner look. Read *here* about my fabrics, including using some sheets from the Porthault design vault.

Spoolin’ Around, au natural

I feel like I’m also creating a Tea Towel series, but really I’m not trying to. It’s just that this towel from Padua, Italy was blue and white and the top just called out for this to be used here. St. Anthony is a Big Deal in that town, as you can tell by his likeness, his basilica, his . . . We went to Padua to see the Scrovegni Chapel. Getting this tea towel was a side benefit.

I quilted this during the last week of class, while listening to Barbara Demick’s novel, Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea, and I quilted and quilted. Not perfectly, but that’s also the beauty of making these small quilts–nothing’s so terribly precious about them. They’re fun, not a chore. And I aim to keep it that way, just enjoying the process.

I struggled with the border choices: green soft plaid, or yellow spheres, or red/white dots? Not sure I’m entirely happy about this, but I did want something that wasn’t so serious.

I split the sleeve on the back, because I didn’t want to cover up the words.

And I kept their label: Puro Cotone, because I liked it. I used bits and pieces of the border that was cut off from the top of the towel around my label. I have to say it’s a bit wild looking, but again–I was having fun, and that’s not a bad thing when you are quilter. And that’s my June 1st deadline Schnibble, finished a bit early!

This is #114 on my 200 Quilts list.

What am I working on today? Quilt Labels!

I used to be very diligent about getting labels on all my quilts, but somewhere between the last child getting off to college and grad school and beginning teaching, I sort of forgot to keep doing this. So this summer, one of my Works In Progress is to get labels on all my quilts. I thought I’d share with you my favorite method. Come back Friday for Finishing School Friday to see what I’ve completed this week.

I’m completely in love with Jaybird’s labels, printed up at Spoonflower, but it you want a personalized label for each quilt, you’ll have to make each one individually. There are tons of ways to do this, but here’s one I use and am comfortable with (because it’s easy). The printer method works best for wallhangings that won’t be washed a lot. I have an Epson inkjet, and have done test samples on both machines about what happens to the fabric in the laundry. The inkjet holds up better to washing, if you are not going to go to the trouble of using BubbleJet Set on your fabric. If you really want the wording on the label to stick around on a quilt that will be washed a lot, I think that the Bubble Jet is mandatory.

Or, get out your pigma pens and WRITE the label. I’ve done the latter several times. This was a label for a quilt by our little quilting group: The Good Heart Quilters.

Here’s a more elaborate one (the lower part is a poem) which I bordered, then cut out the pansies and appliqued them around the border. Both of these quilts have been washed a lot of times and the print is still fine and readable. It’s just the photographer who is shaky!

But for the printed label, write up what you want on your label in a word processing program on your computer. My basic items are the name of the quilt, who made it and quilted it (sometimes there are different quilters and it’s only fair they should get some credit). Then after that it varies. I generally always put the date I finished and sometimes I put the date I began. I learned also that having the size of the quilt was handy for when I wanted to enter it into quilt shows. Sometimes I add the name of the city (I’ve moved a couple of times) as it all shows some of the quilt’s history. I like to write a little blurb of one or two lines about the quilt, but sometimes this blurb gets out of hand. Then I’ll call it History of the The Quilt and break it out onto a separate label.

At any rate, when you finish that, print this out on your printer using regular paper (to check spelling, placement, etc.). Cut a piece of fabric the size of your words, back it with freezer paper and place it right on that paper you just printed out. Tape it down on three sides with masking/painter’s tape (Picture 1). Run it through your printer, then peel off the tape (Picture 2). You now have a printed label (Picture 3).

To “set” the label, get out a few more sheets of plain paper, lay over the top and press, with a bit of steam. I do this several times with several sheets of paper until I see that there is no transfer of ink onto the blank paper. I’m still cautious after that about laying my iron down on the laserjet printing, as it’s kind of “plastic-y” and you can melt it with a hot iron.

Trim up the label. Use a gridded ruler to keep the edges square to the printing. On the label, I keep a 3/4″ margin all the way around. On the History bit, I use a 1/2″ margin.

Trimmed.

I like to border my labels. On the left, sewn. On the right, sewn and ironed into shape. Trim off extra fabric, leaving a 1/4″ inch edge to be ironed under.

Here it is pinned onto the quilt. I like to place my labels so that, when facing the quilt and if the right hand lower corner was picked up, you would see the label.

Here’s one of my quilts from the back (I used a tea towel from France as the backing) and you can see the label placement. Here are some more examples:

I don’t know if you can tell, but I made a little flap (the upside-down people) for this quilt label. When you enter a quilt show they like you to cover up your name (for judging purposes).

This was one of my favorite labels: an envelope on the back of the Valentine’s quilt about hearts being drawn together like “Twined Threads.” And that was the name I gave to the quilt. A snap keeps the envelope shut.

And that’s what I’ve been working on–Quilt Labels! Click *here* to see what everyone else is doing.