Baby Quilt Label Conumdrum

The sweet dreams I had before Thanksgiving of finishing the baby quilt for my niece didn't exactly play out as planned.

Things got busy, as they usually do, and I only finally finished the quilting part of the project a few days ago.

One thing I always try to do for baby quilts is ink in the baby's name, birthday, weight, and other interesting info about the little bundle of joy.

For this quilt, it is a simple 9-patch, so finding a little place to tuck in the letters was more than a small challenge.

I went back and forth and was thinking of putting a little applique butterfly or a bug on there with the name.  I eventually started flipping through Baltimore Album books and found a traditional geometric looking Victorian paper-cut block.

Elly's Beloved Baltimore Album Quilts is the book I ended up using for the pattern.  There will be plenty of space to write inside of the cutouts.

The fun part will be inking directly on the quilt with permanent ink.  No pressure.

Handmade Quilt Label: broderie perse (part 2)

Here's the 2nd part of the Broderie Perse labels - this label is on the back of our baby son's quilt.

Again I took some fabric from Anna Maria Horner's design and cut out some white leaves. I wrote on the leaves in my funky calligraphy style. Oh, and it was so nice of my friend Carol to applique most of it on there for me. That was perhaps the best part.

Makes me want to finish more quilts just so I can put labels on them!

Don't forget to put the name of who the quilt is for, who made it, date, washing instructions if you are going to give it away (wash cold, gentle, hang dry...wash as infrequently as possible), location of where it was made.

On that note...perhaps I HAVE finished another quilt. Maybe Kathie knows which quilt it might be....Is the suspense killing you?

Handmade Quilt Label: broderie perse (part 1)

To spice up my niece's quilt, I used a broderie perse applique method to create the label.

Anna Maria Horner (her blog) is a super cool fabric designer that makes all sorts of large prints in wild colors. Her color usage is quite bold and unique actually.

I bought some fabric that she designed for Freestyle from her Drawing Room collection. It has all these great birds and flowers all over it.

The birds had a lot of blank white space, so I wrote the quilt label inside of that, and cut around it carefully to applique on as the label.

I will confess that I also used this method for the other quilt label I just made for our baby son. That label is even better because my dear friend Carol actually ended up doing the applique to put it on there for me! (hee hee...it was a complex pattern, and a very heavy fabric as well!)