Design your own Quilt Labels

by on in Quilting
Have you ever heard of Spoonflower?
…neither had I until I was surfing Julie’s blog and came across this post.
I was intrigued and had to check it out to see if it was something that would work for me.  I already make my quilt labels using my inket printer most of the time.  Sometimes I just use a Micron pen and write my labels out for a more personal touch if the quilt is going to stay in the family.
Shortly after surfing the Spoonflower site I was excited!!  I saw all kinds of cool and funky fabrics people had designed for themselves.  You can even agree to sell your original fabric designs right on Spoonflower’s site and you get to  keep like 10% of the sales.
I wanted to make some professional looking labels (like Julie’s) that were permanent and allowed me some space to write in the date, name of quilt, who it’s for, etc.  I opened up Photoshop and got to work.
This is what I came up with:
…nice and simple just the way I wanted it.
Spoonflower recommends you print out a $5 swatch of your fabric before ordering the yardage because sometimes colors don’t turn out the same, etc.
But being the ridiculously impatient person that I am… I just couldn’t do that.  It would require me waiting twice to get my goodies. I just don’t have the patience for that.  Now I see why my mom is so surprised that I quilt.  Every time she comes to visit she asks me how I find the patience to quilt.  I don’t think quilting requires anymore patience than anything else we do. It’s more about the entire quilt making process, not just the end result.  Of course I love having a finished quilt because it’s ready to hang up or snuggle under but I think I like it even more because it means I can start a new project!
Any of you feel the same way?
…back to the topic at hand…
About a week later look what arrived!
 A full yard of my custom 4″ x4″ quilt label fabric!
It was pricier than a regular yard of fabric but come on…I designed it myself!
With shipping and everything I paid about $18.20.  That’s a little high for a yard of fabric but is it high for 90 quilt labels?!  I think not!  That’s only $0.20 per label.  If you designed your labels smaller than my 4″ x 4″ you could even fit more than 90.  The way I see it, how long will it take me to make 90 quilts? hmmmm… at the rate I’m going maybe a few years but still….I won’t need any more labels for a good long while.
Remember the Tribal Tumbler quilt I made for my DS (darling son)?
well, it just got a label!
I added some fusible web to the back of the label and with the paper still attached I write the label info. with a .05 Micron archival ink pen.  Make sure you do this while the paper of your fusible web is still because it helps stabilize the fabric for writing on it.  Fusing the label is not really a good idea for a quilt that is going to get a lot of use.  So, I whipstitched it down by hand also.  For the next quilt I will use my cheater’s version of needle turn applique to attach the label so I don’t get any exposed raw edges.  See what I mean about being impatient?  I didn’t stop long enough to think about the best way to attach the label, I just wanted to see it on a quilt.  At least now I know for the next one.

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