Quilt Labels

Isn't this a beautiful quilt label?  I printed it on cotton fabric and then hand embroidered the border and the flowers.  

To print my label, I used printable fabric sheets. There are so many brands that sell printable fabric in 8-1/2 x 11" sized sheets.   You can buy these from most fabric stores, craft stores or Amazon.com 

The sheets feed easily through your printer. After printing, you remove the paper backing:

and you have a nice soft, flexible piece of cotton fabric with your text or graphics printed on it!  

After you remove the backing, you set the ink by using a dry iron on a high heat setting.  

I would check the fabric manufacturers instructions for insuring color-fastness and fade-resistance, there are a lot of differences in the various brands.  

After that, the label is easy to cut out and use:

I love designing these labels.  I designed a set to put in my Etsy shop.  There are 23 different labels that are all fully editable.  

You can open them in the free program Adobe Reader, type in your personalized information and print!  If you want to change the font, the font color or style, you can do that too: 

You could also print the label without text and add your own information in your own handwriting, using a permanent fabric pen:

There are 12 full color decorative labels.  I also included 8 black and white labels with embroidery motifs.  These are intended to be embroidered, but you could also use them as is.

There are two blank labels, and two care instructions labels, one that is not editable but includes all the laundry symbols: 

 

This is what the Quilt Labels set looks like:

I know how much I am enjoying using these, I wish I could finish a quilt as quickly and easily as these labels!

Organizing - Quilting Journal

I absolutely love using my Sewing Journal and it is keeping me so organized! I got to thinking that I wanted to keep a separate set of records for my quilting projects. 
So, I made a nice set of pages that I can use to record everything quilt and quilting related!  It is a Quilting Journal.

There are pages for just about everything. I thought that it would need to cover three categories:

1. Documenting a finished quilt
2. Planning a quilting project
3. Recording inventory/resources/supplies

That is a lot of information.  It turned out to be 30 pages! 

I added an editable feature, I can type any title I want on this page - completely customizable.  Same with the binder tabs.  The nice thing is being able to make as many different section dividers as I want:

I really like the layout and I am having a great time filling mine in. 

Now I need to finish this quilt top so I can document it.  There is still much embroidering left to do! {that is the open cretan stitch I am doing on the borders} 

I listed an instant download version of the Quilting Journal in my Etsy shop:

Snow days and a quilt update

We have had almost a week of snow!

We get snow most winters but not usually this much and it usually doesn't stay this long.

I love the gray sky:

and how beautiful the landscape looks

covered in white:

Rego and Berit LOVE the snow and everything about it!

Chasing snowballs, eating snow...

it's all good!

Speaking of snow, do you remember my snow quilt project?

I have made some progress with stitching motifs in the small plain fabric squares:

and I have decided to use the open cretan stitch for all the borders around the blocks:

I like this stitch, It is quick to do and suits the patchwork-y look of this quilt. So far so good - I will keep you updated on my progress.

progress on my snowman quilt:

Do you remember my snowman quilt project? Well, I have been busy working on it and I am almost finished with the quilt top:I finished stitching the last two snowmen - one in red: and one in mostly blue: My next step is embroidering on the small squares. I am using images from the Snow! embroidery pattern packetRight now I am adding all the beautiful emroidery stitching over the seams. Here I am using the open cretan stitch: I want to use many different stitches to embellish the seams. I love the way they look. This project has been so much fun and I am learning a lot about quilting. One thing I need to figure out is the order of sewing everything together. I actually sewed all the inside blocks together, sewed all the outside border pieces together (making sort of a frame) and then sewed the frame to the big inside piece. Is this the right process? I would appreciate any tips - here is my quilt plan so you can see the pattern I am using. I will keep posting my progress!