Doing Some Things That Need to be Done

I was talking to a friend as I was walking the boys tonight and remembered that I needed to make labels for the five quilts I got back from my long arm quilter a few weeks ago. I’ve been thinking about this a little bit and had an idea of how I was going to approach this.

Here’s four of the labels.

My plan was to use my sewing machine’s memory function to make labels using a basic alphabet.

So after our walk, I hit the sewing room and started playing around. I made a label for the quilt I gave to my nephew and his wife for their wedding last summer. That label turned out waaaay too stiff and I wasn’t happy with it.

So I had been thinking that I had a couple of options for stabilizing these labels for stitching, and a couple of options for attaching them to the back of the quilts. You really do need to use stabilizer when stitching these labels. Without it you’ll have a puckered mess!

I thought maybe I could use a light heat and bond to both stabilize and attach the labels. FAIL! The paper was too stiff to pull away from the stitching. So I tried using some water soluble stabilizer that I’ve had for a few months. And then I though I could use some fusible webbing to attach this to the quilt. And I liked how it worked.

I used some practice labels to test out these different stabilizing and adhesive options and bonded them to a quilt sandwich I use while setting up my machine for free motion quilting.

The stop one was done with the fusible webbing. It’s soft and more smooth. The bottom one is using the light Heat and Bond. it’s too stiff and it doesn’t look as good. So, I will use the fusible webbing once the labels are done. Then I’ll do a simple blanket stitch to finish the edges of the labels.

It took me a little bit of time to remember how to set up strings of words in the memory of my machine. So there was a lot of stitching!

And then, once I figured out the memory part, it took some time to figure out how to make the machine stop once it finished the text in memory, rather than repeating the same text over again.

After about an hour, I had it all figured out and I made the first label on the light blue batik. I thought it was great until a friend pointed out that I had misspelled handmade. So, I will remake this one.

I made the three beige labels assembly line style. I started with the bottom line on each label and sewed that line onto all three labels. Then I moved up line by line until I was done.

Oh, and something to remember for the next time I make labels. Batik fabric works much better! It has a higher thread count and helps keep the fabric flat with all that stitching. I was using some Kona cotton for my test piece and it was pretty puckered.

Later this week I’ll finish up the labels and get them attached to the quilts. I want to get them shipped in plenty of time for the holidays. And that’s getting closer every day!

I did do a little sewing over the weekend. I made six masks for some friends who had asked for more. I have made them masks since the pandemic hit and they love the fit of these.

The husband wears hearing aids so has trouble with some masks. He really likes the adjustable ear straps on the masks at the left. All of these masks are made with two layers of batik with one layer of fusible nonwoven interfacing. You can find the pattern for my masks in this blog post. If you make masks, you should give this pattern a try. I’ve made a LOT of different mask patterns and this one fits the best, is really comfy and is really easy to make. Everyone I’ve made them for absolutely love them.

I also made a few strip sets for my Aboriginal fabric trip quilt.

I quit sewing after I sewed two strips together with the wrong and write sides facing each other. I haven’t yet been able to make myself pick this seam out and start over.

Luckily, one of those fabrics is nice and dark so it will be easy to see the stitches. Damn.

Some significant rain and wind storms were predicted for my area over the weekend, but they never really materialized. So it was a pretty nice weekend and the boys and I got some good walks in.

This is such a gorgeous time of year here in Portland.

On our mid day walk in the rain this afternoon I saw the biggest mushrooms I’ve ever seen!

Bender was not terribly impressed.