Quilt Labels, Past and Future

I recently completed two quilts and made these two quilt labels:





My sister gave me this book of "iron on" quilt labels. I am excited to try one of these out! The directions say to color the labels with crayons and markers. I'm not too sure about using crayons.... but I think an ironed on label in plain black and white would be nice. I could then fill in the blanks with my black permanent fabric pen. At some point, I may do a trial label using crayons and/or markers to see how it turns out before sewing it on an actual quilt.

The book of iron on quilt label transfers:





Have any of you ever used these type labels? How did they work?

A Sweet Finish - Sweet Savannah

As promised in Friday's post, I worked diligently on this quilt in my spare moments over the weekend and am happy to report that it has been finished and delivered to my friend who will be presenting it to Sweet Savannah's Mama-to-be on Saturday at a baby shower.



Here's the quilt being free motion machine quilted. This is the second quilt that I've attempted this type of quilting on and it went very well.



I put my ironing board at a lowered position behind my sewing machine to make a surface for the quilt to lay on, so that it wouldn't hang over the back. This helps the quilting process immensely.



This is the back of the quilt. This is the first time I've incorporated some blocks into the backing fabric and I love how it turned out!



The label on the back:



A couple of more views:





My camera doesn't take very good close up pictures, but if you look closely, you'll see a tiny heart in the meandering quilting.



I have a queen size quilt that is basted and ready to quilt. I think I'm ready to tackle free motion quilting it! Its very hard work, but so worth it when you get done.

Weekend Quilting

Since my quilting time is very limited.... to weeknights after work, Saturdays after housework and Sundays after church.... I can sometimes feel stressed out trying to do it all. This week I felt the need to step away from all after work quilting to catch my breath a little bit.

But, now that the weekend is almost here its time to quilt!

This weekend I would like to finish "Sweet Savannah". Here's how it looks so far.



You can see in the picture that I need to sew the already pinned on bottom border, and cut and sew on the top border. This will only take a few minutes and this quilt top will be finished. I should be able to do this tonight. Then tomorrow I plan to pin baste and begin machine quilting it. If all goes well, I might be able to bind it on Sunday.

Do you have weekend quilting plans?

Thank You Ms. Georgia Bonesteel!

Recently I did an internet search to see if Georgia Bonesteel had a website or blog and discovered that she has a blog HERE. I left a couple of comments and I was so thrilled to receive a personal email from Ms. Georgia Bonesteel and even more thrilled to receive this signed copy of her latest book in the mail.



If you aren't familiar with Ms. Bonesteel, she is a well known quilting author and teacher. She is the inspiration that got me started in quilting and I still to this day go back to her original 1980s book, "Lap Quilting with Georgia Bonesteel" when working on quilts. She is also famous for her many quilting shows shown on PBS.

So, thank you Ms. Bonesteel for this great book and for all the inspiration you have given me over the years!

Quilting... A Workout?

The bigger the quilt gets, the more the workout! I never knew that making a quilt was such hard physical work, until I actually made one. But, once the quilt is finished, its worth the work.

Saturday, I worked on preparing "Early Autumn" for quilting. The quilt is queen size, so it needed a big empty floor space to be worked on. In the living room I have to move furniture out of the way and I knew if I didn't finish by lunch time, I'd seriously be in the way of other family members coming and going, watching tv, etc.

So I decided to use the floor in hubby's and my bedroom, upstairs. There is just enough room at the foot of the bed, if I moved a few small things on the side of the room out of the way. But, the ironing board was set up in the sewing room downstairs. I used a covered tv tray to sit the iron on in order to be able use as much of the ironing board surface as possible. My hubby and I are planning a bigger ironing surface, but don't have it done yet. :o)

Ironing a big quilt top and the quilt backing is a hard job using a standard ironing board, but it can be done:




I can't tell you how many times I ran up or down stairs while working on this quilt Saturday! If I was upstairs, the scissors were downstairs. If I was downstairs, the scissors were upstairs. LOL. Once I got the backing fabric ironed to my satisfaction, I ran upstairs with it before it got wrinkled again and proceeded to spread it out. This means walking around, and around it. Bending over, bending over, crawling around, crawling around and each of these things over and over until it was right. Then you start taping the edges down. Then the walking, bending and crawling repeat themselves many more times until this is done to my satisfaction.

The taped down quilt backing:



The special quilt batting I wanted to use, Hobbs Heirloom, was stored in a storage space in the attic. I opened the door and couldn't quite reach it without crawling around in there. I finally used our "grabber" tool to drag it out. Then, the batting had to be spread out and trimmed to fit the backing. ..... more walking around, bending, stooping, and crawling .... in between going up and down stairs.

At this point, it was time to start ironing the quilt top. After I got it ironed to my satisfaction, I ran upstairs with it to keep it from wrinkling and ALL of the walking, bending, stooping, crawling, going up and down stairs repeated again. The quilt top has to be spread out from the center and kept very smooth.


THEN I started crawling around on the floor pinning the quilt with curved safety pins made for this purpose. I did this off and on the rest of the day, right up until bedtime, when I FINALLY finished it. By this time I was barely able to move from exhaustion. One more final trip around the quilt, walking, bending, stooping and crawling to remove all the tape from the edges and then VERY carefully folding the quilt sandwich so that nothing would get wrinkled.

I was so tired by the end of the day, I was about to die!!! There was no way I could begin machine quilting as I had planned.

So if you are trying to lose some weight like I am, quilt making is just what you need to get a good workout. The muscles in my derriere, can attest to that this morning. I am sore!

Sweet Savannah

I am working on an "unscheduled" baby quilt! A friend requested that I make a quilt for a baby girl whose name will be Savannah. Who can resist a sweet baby girl named Savannah? So, my name for this quilt is "Sweet Savannah".

Two Strips Made Last Night:



I found a cute pattern and tutorial by Crazy Mom Quilts on the Moda Bake Shop website, called Stacked Coins Baby Quilt. This quilt is going together extremely quickly. I cut out the rectangles and sewed two of the five strips in about an hour last night. I hope to make two, and possibly three more of the strips tonight.

The pattern calls for 5 inch charm packs. I had some of these in my stash and pulled all the pink ones from them. Then I cut 5 inch squares from other pink floral fabric that was in my stash. So, if you don't have the charm packs or don't want to go to that expense, its very easy to make your own 5 inch squares. The 5 inch squares are cut in half to make the rectangles in the strips. Easy!!!

Rectangles to be sewn into more strips:

Early Autumn Quilt Top

Today is Whatcha Working on Wednesday at Leslie's blog, My Country Home.

I finished adding the borders on Early Autumn over the weekend. Please excuse the wrinkles in the quilt top, as I didn't have time to iron it before going to work today!

I REALLY wanted to get the quilt pin basted and start machine quilting it this past weekend. Pin basting a queen size quilt like this is a job that is very physically draining to me because of all the crawling around on the floor that it requires. Also, it requires moving furniture out of the way to make room for this process.

So, I have saved this part of the quilt making process for this Saturday morning. I will vacuum the floor well, tape down the quilt backing, make the quilt sandwich and pin for periods of time, off and on, all morning, until it is done. That way I can put the furniture back in place in time for afternoon College Football tv watching time. :o)

I hope to have made much progress toward completing this quilt by next week this time!