Labels
 

I'm wanting to make labels for my quilts but I'm a little confused as to how this works. I've seen some very nice detailed ones and I read about printing them. How do you get your fabric through the printer? Do you have to have a special printer for this? Or do you send them out and have them custom made?

A lot depends on your printer. There are different techniques for the different type. You can send out to Spoonflower or other places, that means a lot of things have already been taken care of. Some people with better handwriting and/or embroidery skills than I do them that way.

You can buy prepared sheets of white fabric -- check out your local office supply store in the special stuff section, it is generally less expensive than buying at the LQS or online through quilting stores.

I've been printing on fabric since about Y2K. I have used many different fabrics, solids, colors, and prints simply by ironing the fabric to freezer paper, cutting nicely to size and running through my correct printer path. I've had to do things, again, whether it was ink jet or laser or whatever.

You could use iron-on or heat transfer paper. There are many different brands. You see this used commonly is designing your own t-shirt. Basically design your label, reverse it, print it on the transfer paper, and then iron onto a piece of fabric to sew on the back of your quilt or iron directly onto the quilt back.

I have been having my labels made by Spoonflower for sometime. Very cost effective and I did a simple design that left a space for a personal touch.

I do my labels using the freezer paper and fabric . I iron the fabric to paper and cut 8 1/2 by 11 and run it thru the printer. Sorry I type up what I want and save it and then go to print when I am ready. works fine. I double the fabric after the fact.

I sometimes use the reverse side of a fabric used on the front. Iron it on to freezer paper, write the message and hand stitch it to the back corner of the quilt. It does depend what the fabric is on the front if it will work or not.

Most of my quilting group have fancy embroidery machines and their labels are as big as a page from a book with illustrations. LOL

I'm one of those with a fancy embroidery machine and I use Embrilliance to design my labels. I make a lot of bed quilts that get washed frequently and everything pen I tried, washed out eventually. I was printing my labels on paper, tracing them onto the fabric and then hand embroidering them. I like to put the recipients name, occasion, date and my name on the label. I find this much simpler for me when I machine embroider the name.

I haven't used my embroidery machine in years. It takes too long to program the thing. I checked out the new ones and they seem to take programming and formatting to the extreme. I sit and watched my friend program a nice label. OMG I was so agitated at the one at a time ding ding ding.

I have an archival pen and write on a piece of fabric. Fold into a triangle. Place onto back corner with binding and the just blind stitch the hem.

If you piece your back - include a piece of white - then just include label there.

If the quilt is for a special person - I write Name, date , occasion. Then my name & town. Finally I add washing instructions: "Machine wash cold, tumble dry low"

You can leave out the names but i believe the historians want the remaining.