I don't really keep a journal but I do have a notebook with some of my quilts and their respective notes. All the match calculations for one; block sizes; numbers of each block needed; etc. Most times the recipient.

I sometimes do a BOM quilt from my LQS. The shop owner uses a loose-leaf binder as her 'journal'. She keeps small (1" square) piece of each fabric; all the instruction sheets for each class/month; etc. I'm sure she records fabric lines, etc. as well. If I were actually going to do something along the lines of a quilt journal, I like the idea of a loose leaf binder. Room for expansion as well as easily being able to label the spine of the binder with what it is, etc. Then again, I'm a binder kinda gal...use them for all sorts of record keeping.

I print a picture of the quilt on an index card, (sometimes during the process too). I write the information on the back, and keep them in a small photo album.

Wish I had kept a journal. A friend in my Quilt Guild has a standard photo album of every quilt she has ever made. The back of the photo she slides in an index card with info, name, date and anything else she wants to remember.

I'm newer at quilting as well and recently created an excel document listing details that I want to preserve forever (i.e. dates, pattern name, recipient, machine, batting, fabrics, etc.) I've also taken pictures of everything and keep in a special picture folder on my computer. Lastly, I have saved the printed patterns I've used with all of my modifications and notes in a file folder/cabinet - I can see this is where organization will be a challenge.

I agree with others it's about finding what system works for you. Good luck! Look forward to seeing pics of your projects too!

Christine

I used to keep little pieces of each fabric, until I started making a lot of scrappies. It started getting confusing and a bit time consuming at that point. I do take a lot of photographs of my quilts, in progress and when they are finished.
I am pretty happy with that.

I found this link to a nice "journal" page. One of my after retirement projects, this January, is to begin to complete a page to what ever level I can. I have photos of nearly all of my quilts so I will be doing lots of 4X6 printing of photos.

When I searched for the link, it says use freely and make copies! http://mariaelkins.com/qd.pdf

My quilt "journal" is on my PC, I keep all my pertinent records in OneNote (part of the Microsoft Office software suite).

However, I am considering moving to paper, due to being inspired by my grandmother's quilting journal. She kept all her quilting stuff in 3-ring binders - things like her hand-drawn patterns, all her calculations for fabric needed, notes about how the quilt should be assembled...all that stuff is in there. It's so cool to flip through! I found her notes and patterns for quilts she made for me when I was a kid! I don't think she ever used someone else's pattern, she drafted everything herself. (I'm the same way! Now I know where I got it.)

The best part for me, though, was all the other stuff she added. She sort of treated it like a journal and wrote little paragraphs about who each quilt was for and why she was making it - some very sweet comments in there about people we haven't seen or thought about in years, and charming to read about myself as "my new baby granddaughter". She also saved several of the newsletters from her quilting guild in that binder, with mentions of her quilts highlighted or circled. Those were fascinating to read through, too. Over 20 years worth of newsletters!

And at the end of the last binder, she knew when she was working on her last quilt (due to worsening health), and she wrote a two-page essay about what quilting had meant to her in her life and put it in there. Nobody in the family knew she'd written that until my aunt and I were flipping through her quilt journal a couple years ago and found it - 12 years after grandma passed away; 15 years after she stitched her last quilt.

We even found a little mystery - none of us recognized that last quilt that she wrote about and drew a pattern for! We found photos of her posing with it so we know it was completed, but apparently nobody in the family ever saw it in person or knows what she did with it, and she didn't list who it was for in the journal (though she did list that information for almost every other quilt). It's very strange! I took photos of the pattern grandma made for it, I might try to reproduce it some day. :) (My theory is she donated it to her guild or gifted it to a guild mate - the photos look like they might have been taken at a guild meeting.)

So...I like my digital record-keeping because it's easy and convenient, but I can't imagine it having anything like the impact of all those three-ring binders of grandma's. My aunts and I treasure those binders! I don't know if anybody in my family will ever care about my stuff as much, but I think I'd like to leave something like those binders behind anyway. And I do like drawing my quilts out on graph paper, even though I have EQ7. I should buy a binder and a three-hole punch and get it started. :)

Two things to consider. You should have something strong enough to hold pictures, that's a must for me. Second is having a format that keeps the same type of info for each quilt, with a space for special info.

You don't need to glue the entire swatch down. Just put the glue along one edge. Then you can lift and feel as you please.