Quilt Labels - Drudgery or Delight?

Juliann has done a couple of posts about quilt labels - here and here. It made me think about my love/hate relationship with quilt labels. I love to read the labels on other people's quilts - the information is always interesting to me, and some people are so creative with their labels. On the other hand, I don't enjoy making labels and have tended to consider them a chore. Which is the wrong approach, don't you think?

Here are some questions for you:

• How do you feel about making labels?
• Do you have a favorite method of making labels?
• A favorite label that you have created?
• A favorite label that you've seen?
• Tips or suggestions?
• Do you stay mostly utilitarian or branch out into artistic labels?
• Have you used pre-printed labels like these or these?
  

If you decide to answer these questions on your blog, please leave me a comment so I can visit!

I like this little 4 patch one; from Provencial Patch, a simple way to make neat text; love the little train on this one from Lulu Lollylegs; and a label tutorial for unique labels from A Country Mouse in the City.

Ya' know, as I've pursued the topic on this post...I've decided I can do better. My little utilitarian labels are so dull, it is no wonder I don't enjoy making them. I like the back of my quilts to be fun - why not the labels?

O.K. - now, I guess it is time to be off to the country for the big family get together - a little work and lots of play!

Labor Day Begins

My Bloglines Feeds are not showing! I thought it would probably cure itself, but this morning...still no feeds. Not being able to get my feeds is frustrating. Anyone else with this problem?

I have a meeting this morning and a dozen errands and preparing for the arrival of Erin and the kids. Busy day.

Here is the new piece in progress. Needs a lot of detail yet.
A couple of weeks ago, I tried to do a thread drawing based on one of my journal doodles, but the tension on my machine was giving me problems and I, uh, had trouble following the lines. It was never meant to be more than a practice attempt for another piece, but it didn't go so well. :(
This piece is once again in stalled progress, but at least I got the other border on.

Hope everyone has a great weekend!

September Approaches!

Erin and the kids are planning to come up tomorrow for Labor Day weekend. Gustav's path end up encouraging a longer visit. I can't believe August is almost over and Labor Day weekend has arrived!

I have Max's hat, but since I wasn't expecting them, I've not been working on the little quilt thing for Mila. Another border has been added, but no decision about whether it is to be a doll quilt, tote bag, or pillow. The quickest thing to do with it would be to make it a wall quilt, and Mila could either hang it or put it on a doll bed.

This is the only project that got any time today.

Bari J and Her Lovely Fabrics

BariJ is in the process of bringing her fabric line to fruition. She is talking to an interested company and hoping to be licensed soon, and the sooner some of these luscious fabrics are available, the better!
Beautiful, aren't they?

On Hats and Flawed Ideas and Follow-through

Grandson Max loves hats. He's just turned two, but he evidently has something of his great-grandfather's fondness for head gear. This little camouflage number had Max written all over it - well, after a little fusing and zig zagging, it did. The stitching proved more difficult than I anticipated because of the layers on the brim, but he won't care. It didn't take long and counts as one item I completed today. My original idea concerning the piece below has also presented obstacles. I got this started this morning and then didn't like the direction I'd planned on. Now, I'll have to re-think .

Kim's (Skybell Arts) Living Consciously segment of her blog always interests me. On a recent post the practice said to identify one thing you'd love to do...do it.

I began pondering all of the things I say I'd love to do, but never get around to doing. Sometimes I'm afraid of beginning something I don't know much about, sometimes it seems that I would need to buy a bunch of stuff to get started, sometimes the project just seems too large or requires planning I'm not willing to engage in (planning is not a strong point in my life). Is it fear or laziness or having so many things already on my agenda -- that prevents me from going forward?

That question deserves more thought....

Picked up my new and stronger dosage of Levothyroxin today, the second increase this summer-- so more blood work in a month. That will be just fine if my energy pattern improves.

Pondering and looking for creative solutions to flawed ideas later...after my nap.

Hobbit House & Handmade

I found this hobbity cottage via planethappykids -
I love ecologically concerned housing, and this little house in Wales is another interesting example of how some individuals go about creating housing that conforms to their overall environmental standards. This style would not fit in my neighborhood, but wouldn't if be fun to live in a fairy tale wood and come home to this cottage, knowing that you were benefiting the earth and helping build "sustainable and resilient" communities? More
about the house and the family that built it - here and here.

Another cause that has come to my attention over the past year through various blogs is the Buy Handmade movement. This Christmas, I hope to buy more handmade items. Recently, I bought two prints from Etsy shops:

This one from Obsolete World - which I hung in the "Mila's bedroom" for her visit.
And this one from Arian - which I gave to Amelia.I love Arian's postcards, too. She sent the one below along with the larger print.I was very pleased with both purchases!

Borders, I Need

Strips for more colorful borders. The pieces left over from other projects have no length left to them and the next border for the strange creature embroidery will need to be longer.

Nothing much in the sewing department this weekend or today. Maybe tomorrow I'll be able to get something accomplished. I've received some great suggestions for those small projects I don't know what to do with and have a project I want to begin.

This entire morning was taken up with waiting rooms. First my dental appointment: good check-up and now my teeth do feel so nice and clean!

Then to the doctor's office for this month's blood work. It was an hour before I moved from the front waiting room to the back waiting room, which is unusual for this time of year (providentially, I brought a book to read), but then it was quick and easy. The lab assistant knows me and chooses the smallest needle for my rolling veins. Hope this time will get my thyroid back in balance. This has been a strange summer with unusual sleep and energy patterns--I blame it all on the difficulty of getting my medication dosage right. This is the third month of lab work, and I'm sure that this will be the last.

I AM GOING TO MY YOGA CLASS TONIGHT. Really.

Saturday Night Film

Last night, Fee and I went to the Robinson Film Center to see a screening of Divorce, Italian Style, the 1961 Oscar-winning satire about an Italian nobleman who decides to murder his wife in order to marry...his cousin. This is one of the films in the Italian Film Festival--others include The Bicycle Thief, Bread and Tulips, The Golden Door, Cinema Paradiso, and My Brother Is an Only Child. The festival includes lectures and panel discussions about local Italian immigrants and the history of Italian cinema.

There is a Bistro that serves delicious (and out of the common run) food on the second floor of the Center, and patrons can take their drinks into the theater. We had drinks at the bar before the movie, and my glass of wine accompanied me into the theater.

We ate after the film, and Fee had beef carpacchio and fried green tomatoes which looked delicious, but I'd eaten a bag of popcorn during the movie and stuck with a small Caesar salad. Last time we were there, I had Medallions of Pork Tenderloin with
apples, brown sugar and white chocolate sauce, wild rice pancake. Interesting!

Now What?

I have so many little pieces of projects...things that are fun to do, but for which I have no overall plan. These items fall into a "Now What?" category and hang around on the design board, in baskets, or in piles waiting for an idea to materialize that will carry them forward. They also fall into that WIP (or WISP - Works in Slow Progress - as Sharon B. terms them) category.

Part of the reason for so many of them is that I have only intimations, glimmers of an idea and feel compelled to do something about them before they are lost in the chaos. With no clear cut direction and lots of fractions of ideas, I play a while and then abandon them until inspiration about what to do with them occurs. Sometimes it does. Not always.

An example is the strange embroidered creature holding Mila's name. I wanted to have something to embroider for times I was watching my Netflix loves (currently The House of Eliot and Wonderfalls), so I took a figure from an old journal (that I used in mail art to hold signs and dates) and set to work. Finished even. Then didn't know what to do with him.Yesterday, I used pieces of left-over borders and framed it with more color. What next? - more borders? Maybe. Still don't know what it will be. Once again, I'm faced questions about purpose, but since making the little doll quilt, I'm thinking on those lines.

Doll Quilt

Finished size - 15 1/2" x 19"



I do think some quote or poem would help fill in the back nicely, but as I feared, I'm a little tired of it. A quote or poem about dolls, sleep, or stars would work, but if I include something, I want it short. :) There is no hurry.

Free-for-all Friday

Who knows where this day will go?

Finished the stars on the back of the doll quilt last night. I'll get some pictures when the light is better, but I like it. I've been considering adding some text among the stars on the back, but believe I'll delay that decision because..

At present, other ideas are competing. For example, this little package of animals that Debby sent a while back caught my attention. Wouldn't they make playful embroidered figures on (gasp!) another doll (or small wall) quilt?
Played with some of the scraps using "liberated" methods, but I'm going to put them away until something comes to me. Sometimes process is more relaxing than either progress or product.
I found these pieces that at one time were intended to be a quilt border (Diana Hires style), but didn't work out, so were shoved aside. They may work with another idea I have in mind.Today should be busy with lots of errands and maybe a little cleaning, but I hope to get started on another project.

Some delicate blooms : hyacinth bean, society garlic, 3 different salvias, a soft rosey red, a white, and blue/black salvia, autumn clematis, and for greenery and heavenly perfume - basil.

I wish you could smell that basil!

This and That

Shoot, I intended to delete the first draft of this post and deleted the post I had finished instead. Now, I'm reconstructing.

The binding went on last night.
All stitched down now.

Finished? No, I was dissatisfied with the back - too bland.

So I added some fused raw-edge stars that need some blanket stitching.
Then will it be finished?

Yes.

Unless... I decide to add some text, a quote, a nursery rhyme. That, however, will depend on whether or not I'm tired of it by the time I get all the stars done.

All these little scrap pieces are working on me. I'm thinking of a way to turn the tables and work on them instead. There are lots of scraps left from the front as well.
Before Prozac, there was quilting. (via A Prairie Home Quilts)

Doll Quilt Progress

I've made a few additions to the nine patch, pieced the back, made the sandwich. Used a spray adhesive, but will add a few safety pins, too. Then on to the quilting.

On Headers and Letters

At least the header finally fits the frame. That is all I can manage for now.

Yesterday involved more cleaning out over at Laddie's. More pictures discovered...the pictures have been the most rewarding discoveries so far. Lots of letters, too, but no time yet to read them (oh, OK, I have taken time to read a few; just can't resist).

Speaking of letters, that record of relationships has almost disappeared from our lives, hasn't it? The telephone was the first destructive influence on letter writing. It is easy to make a phone call and actually hear the individual's voice; immediate, easy, personal communication, but telephone calls leave no record of the conversation.

Today, email is probably used more frequently than the telephone. Although email can be saved and/or printed, emailing is quite different in style from letter writing and lacks the personal handwriting, the postmark, etc. that snail mail has.

Two recent reads made liberal use of letters:

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (I'm still recommending this one highly) is a story told through letters written shortly after WWII. I do love epistolary novels and this one was so well done.

On the nonfiction side, I just finished a biography of Alice Roosevelt Longworth, and the author made liberal use of letters Alice wrote and received -- covering over half a century.

I'm going to take the doll quilt off the wall today and work on it. I'm an expert at neglect.

Aaack!

Obviously have some work to do, but it will have to wait 'til later. I knew I'd have difficulty making any changes to this blog's appearance.

Relaxing Sunday & Another Monday

One of my favorite places to visit is Miss Information, who makes me chuckle every time. This post joins some of my favorites; well, I'm easy, most of her posts are my favorites until the next one.

I added some yo-yos with tiny vintage buttons to the sash on the little dress. Now, I actually kind of like it. With just a small embellishment, my attitude changed.

Not a very good picture below because the buttons caught the flash and the yo yos don't really show.


went to the country yesterday. We cooked some burgers, ate with nephew Cody and his friend Hunter, and rode around in the woods. Two turkeys crossed in front of us at one point, but before I could get the camera up, they were out into the trees and underbrush.

The cabins are coming along; they aren't very big...really just a bedroom with a shower, but we are SO looking forward to being able to take advantage of the retreat they will offer.