Monday, September 03, 2007

Quilt labels.....

Call me old fashioned if you will, but I think labelling your quilt is so important! I mean all that hard work has to be remembered! When I recently gave Elliott's Mum his pinwheel quilt, she was so touched by the label! And the backing fabric! LOL :) I have taken pictures of all the quilt labels in our house just for some examples of how much or how little a label can be. One thing though which reminded me why its nice to label your quilt is that we have a total of 6 quilts from my Mum and she hasn't labelled one of them! Two of them are little crib sized ones that she made for the girls when they were born and they came home from hospital wrapped in them. I can just hear her excuse though, "To busy to do the label Helen!"

This one above is on a quilt for Grace from Daz's Nanna. She has embrodied the flowers on and blanket stitched it on. The words are written in a water proof marker.


This one above is the only one Mum has labelled! There was a date written underneath, but mustn't have been in a waterproof marker Jules! I have seen these labels in Spotlight.

This is one on a quilt from Daz's Aunty Joan who gave it to us to celebrate our wedding. She is actually the Mum of Nic Bridges who is an amazing quilter and has an inspiring blog here. That makes Daz, Nic's cousin. So the image is a printed panal and again blanket stitched on and the words in a waterproof marker.

This is one I have done. Bit wrinkled! But at least it won't fade. Thats why I personally don't like doing it with a waterproof marker, it does fade eventually. Hopefully Milly's grandaughters will be lugging their teddies around in this quilt, I want the label to last that long!


And here is how I do my labels. I work out the size and what to say in a programme called Quark XPress. Brush off my old graphic design skills from the advertising days, I used to use that programme for like 8 hours a day and now I just do quilt labels! So I print it out onto a sheet of T Shirt transfer paper. I buy a pack of 5 from Kmart, under $20.00, a brand called Celcast. They come in A4 size, I usually cut it into thirds and print a few at a time. It prints in reverse as the top pict shows, then when you place it onto the material and iron it on, when you peel it off the print is the correct way. Cut it to size and then blanket stitch on. The only thing I don't like is how the iron on transfer leaves a shinny surface to it, I mean its okay, not soft. I have some freezer paper now, so my next label I think I'll print onto that.

Hope all that helps someone. Love to hear how you do your labels!

8 comments:

Leah said...

Lovely labelling! I expecially like the one by Daz's Nanna - the other day I was reading something about how hand writing is being lost, and it's made me value it more.

Lily Mulholland said...

I must confess I bought the panel of labels from SL. They do the trick!

Austysmum said...

Helen just thought I'd share what I read about freezer paper labels on the net somewhere - you can actually iron it onto the back of the fabric (sort of like iron on interfacing I guess) and that makes the fabric stiff enough to go through the inkjet printer. Then, aqpparently you can just print onto the fabric as you would paper, so no need to reverse print or carefully iron transfer it. Then you just peel off the paper and violla! I don't knoiw how well it works in practice but the theory sounds good - I'm willing to give it a try!!!

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the reminder about how important labels are! I have to admit that I get about half of my quilts labeled. I need to devise a system that is easy so I can just make it an automatic thing. I am going to try your printing method soon.

Great quilts!

Christina said...

I usually just write on my labels but I love you idea. Where is the paper in KMArt is it with the computer paper

Andrea said...

What a lovely post Helen, makes me think I should do one for Ellyse's quilt. I hope that one day her quilt will mean a lot to her.

Helen said...

Thanks girls.

Christina - the paper is usually with the photographic paper in the stationary section at my local Kmart.

Joy - I have done a little printing with the iron iron transfer technique. The stuff that I used, you print the image onto the side the freezer paper was ironed onto, thats what makes the ink stick and its just the fabric that is run through the printer, the paper has already been peeled off. The results where amazing! Like real printed fabric!

Cass said...

I must say that I loved the label Helen did on Lucy's quilt and it means we will always remember it came from "aunty Helen".