Last Finish for June

There is no rain in the forecast today, but more is predicted within the next week. The sun is peaking out through cloudy skies. We got another 4-1/2 inches of rain this week at camp. The water level at the lake is so high now that more than half our dock is underwater and the top step of those two little staircases is underwater too. The water level was three inches under the end of the dock when it was installed earlier this summer. When hubby goes out to the boat, the water is over his ankles. 

Last summer we were in a severe drought condition; this summer we're flooding everywhere. It's just crazy. Conditions have been just right for a sturgeon run up the Cobbossee stream that hasn't been seen here for 40 years. You can't see them especially well in this photo, but they're big, about 3-6 feet in length but up to 10 feet. These are Atlantic sturgeon, and they're spawning right under the bridge downtown. 

I planned to sew all day yesterday, but my plans were derailed by other work that had to be done; so I was up til midnight finishing this quilt. This is 'Feels Like Fall', a round robin my quilt group did, which we called the Tacoma Pizza Box Challenge. Each participant provided a center block and a pizza box full of fabric, and I included some yardage and an abundance of scraps in fall colors in mine.

We made our center blocks in early 2019, and the reveal was in June that year. I don't know why I never blogged about it, I just never did. 

I quilted it with a leaf design, which I liked but hadn't used before. The design is nice but maybe a little too open to suit me, so I'm not sure if I'd use it again. 

I love these embroidered labels. I had a lot of information I wanted to include, and I hate to write them by hand; so an embroidered one was just the ticket. I embroider almost all of my labels and have for years.

Do You Label?

Not everyone does, but most quilt experts and historians agree that we should label our quilts--for future generations, for documentation, and for security. Signed quilts are also more valuable than unsigned quilts. Most importantly, labels can reflect the thought, care, and emotion that go into the making of a quilt.

I inherited this beautiful hexagon baby quilt when my mother passed away a few years ago. It is hand pieced and hand quilted, and in beautiful condition. And I have no idea who made it or how it came to be in my mother's possession, which is a real shame.

I am as guilty as anyone else of not labeling my quilts. I used to do it religiously, but a few years ago I began testing patterns and often didn't take the time to make the label. I have some catching up to do, but I'm also going to make a dedicated effort not to get further behind.

I am almost finished binding my Christmas quilt, and here is the label I made for it, a triangular label that is sewn to two edges of the quilt and only one edge to turn under. I love it! I first saw this idea on Pat's blog, Bell Creek Quilts, and thought it was brilliant. Last week or the week before I discovered Coleen's blog, Colleen's Quilting Journey, and she took the idea one step further and embroidered the text. You can see a couple of her labels here and here. I embroidered my label too and added a small Christmas motif as well.

Next time I make one of these, I'll make that trim at the top of the label about the same width as the binding. I think that might look better. Or I might finish that top edge and not stitch it down so I can use it as a pocket for a photo or something.

I have the same assortment of quilts with muslin labels and pigma pen writing that everyone else has, but sometimes I like to have a little more fun with my labels. My favorite method is to piece a smaller version of one or more blocks in the quilt and sew a row of them together with a plain block for the text. Sometimes the edges are too hard to turn under, so I'll add a little binding to the edge of the label before I sew it down.

The idea for this label came from Jinny Beyer's Soft Edge Piecing book. The background fabric was a piece of hand dyed fabric I'd made years ago, then I fussy cut eight pieces of fabric from a Jinny Beyer border print, stitched the pieces together, and appliqued the curved edges to the background fabric. It's one of my favorites.

For this label, I took a photograph of the front of the quilt, then printed the image on fabric and sewed it to the quilt back.

These two labels haven't made it onto the back of a quilt yet. The yellow one with the sun rays was a gift from a fellow quilter, and I never found the right quilt for it. The one on the right was a block gone wrong, so I cut it on the diagonal twice and used the pieces for the corners of this piece of muslin. I'll probably add some binding to the edges to stabilize the bias.

There are as many ways to make quilt labels as there are people on the planet. Consider adding a label to your quilts.