After Grandma (my dad’s mom) passed in 2006, my mom brought home one of her quilts. It’s been sitting in her linen closet ever since, though she did take it out a couple of times because I wanted to see it, touch it, and give it a little love. When Mom passed in 2017, the quilt stayed tucked away, only coming out once until now...and that time was because of me again.
I treasure this quilt and want it to last and remain in the family. So, I brought it home for a little spa treatment and to add a label. The spa treatment is simply letting it lay flat for a while in the spare bedroom and spending a day in the sun. The sunshine helps nature air it out and gives it a gentle UV bath.
While the quilt is at the spa, let’s chat about how I make my quilt labels. I currently print them at home with an Eco Tank inkjet printer. The process is simple but takes a bit of time.
First, cut a 9 x WOF piece of white fabric, hand wash it, and let it air dry. Then treat it with Bubble Jet Set 2000 and allow it to air dry again. You can print on your own fabric without this product, but the print might wash out, especially if you’re using colors other than black ink.
Once the fabric is dry, I iron it and cut a 9 x 12 piece. The rest goes into my label-making kit box, aka a Ziploc bag. The 9 x 12 piece is then ironed onto a sheet of freezer paper and trimmed to match the paper’s size. I bought the C. Jenkins brand on Amazon a few years back, but it’s no longer made but other brands of printable freezer paper are available. A roll of kitchen freezer paper works too. Years ago I used it by cutting it to standard paper size, 8.5 x 11.
This week I had two quilts that needed labels, and to avoid wasting fabric, I decided to add one to an older quilt that didn’t have a label yet. After printing and letting them dry overnight, I handwashed them in Bubble Jet Rinse and let them air dry.
I design my labels using a free program called Inkscape, which is similar to Adobe Illustrator but free to download and use. I learned to use it while creating quilt patterns to sell. Google Docs is another great free option for making labels, though it can only be used online.
After cutting the labels apart, I use templates made from freezer paper or heat resistant quilter’s template plastic to press the edges under with a little starch and a quick press. I keep these templates stored in my quilt label kit.
I use washable Elmer’s School Glue to secure them to the back of the quilt while stitching. For my newer quilts, I place the labels in the center of the quilt backing before quilting so they can’t be removed without taking out the quilting.
Now that the label is in place, let’s take a closer look at Grandma’s quilt.
My grandma had only a 3rd grade education and was nearly illiterate, with handwriting and spelling that were hard to read. Still, she was a talented seamstress who made many of her family’s clothes. After her kids moved out, she got her first real job at a cabinet making factory, where she worked until retiring at 65. She began quilting in the 80s, without using a rotary cutter or patterns. In the late 90s, my dad gave her a couple of quilt books and a quilting hoop. I’m not sure if she could read the books, as some of the strict rules of quilting didn’t seem to appear in her work...more on that later.
This quilt is not perfect but it's gorgeous in my eyes. The hand quilting blows me away because I can't hand quilt, well I can but it's not pretty.
The feathered wreath above was likely drawn using a template, or at least that’s my guess. As I examined the quilt, I noticed pencil marks she had cleverly tried to hide with the quilting.
The stitches aren’t the best, but they’re not the worst I’ve seen either. The hand quilting is better than mine, so to me, it’s gorgeous!
Nearly all the points are lost in this quilt, which makes me wonder if she knew about the 1/4" seam allowance in quilting. Since she was first a seamstress and then a quilter, I’d bet she used either a 3/8" or 5/8" seam allowance.
The binding is machine stitched to the back and then hand stitched to the front, which is the reverse of the usual method. As shown in the picture above, it’s too wide, and there are no mitered corners on either side. This suggests she cut and attached the binding one side at a time.
The back has a few clues and quirks. One of the first things I noticed was a small spot that might be blood. The only way to know for sure would be to put a little peroxide on it, but I’d rather not. I prefer to think it’s just something she left behind on the quilt while working. The arrows point to thread knots, which she apparently didn’t know to tuck into the fabric. There are two different kinds, the green arrow shows what looks like a hand tied knot, probably how she finished off the thread after quilting, while the red arrow points to the kind of knot you make by threading a needle, wrapping the thread around a finger, and rolling it between your fingers to form a knot.
The backing is made of two pieces of muslin and a narrow strip of pieced poly cotton at the very edge of the quilt. It seems she miscalculated and ended up short on backing. We’ve all been in that situation once or twice...well, I know I have.
Along the middle seam, there’s a strange red thread running the entire length. At first, I thought it might be a stray thread, but how could one go from the top of the quilt to the bottom? Maybe it’s part of the selvage? It feels thick, and I’m stumped. I could take apart a bit of the seam to find out, but it’s not worth the effort. Instead, I used a small crochet hook to pierce the fabric and try to grab the red thread. It’s attached, so I couldn’t pull it out, but I was able to reach the batting...it’s polyester.
I enjoyed spending some quality time with Grandma's quilt. She'll be going back to Dad this week for safe keeping, but maybe one day she'll come home with me for good.
Quilt #2, the one Mom and I made together, needs a new label. The original is starting to fade since I didn’t use the Bubble Jet Set 2000.
More about this quilt can be found here.
Quilt #3 was my Pocketful of Starlight.
More about this quilt can be found here.
