A digression onto labels.

I finished it up my triangle last night, but still haven't signed/labelled it yet. I'm not certain what to do about that, really; I had made some labels via Spoonflower, but they're boring and only just adequate. And also too wordy. And I only have one left anyway. So, it's time to rethink.

Here's my boring label applied to a recent quilt.

So, while I need to ponder that, having the quilt quilted and bound... It's a bit late for this discussion.
Because it should have been labeled already.

I generally attach my label before I baste - with iron on adhesive: I use Pellon Wonder Under 805, but any medium or light weight one will probably do. Sew it down to the back (I just sew regular straight stitches, close to the edge) then baste the quilt together as usual, so that when you quilt, you are quilting on top of the label - giving it a third reinforcing and making it more of a part of an organic part of the quilt. That's my rational anyway. Also makes it super hard to remove, in case someone wants to steal it and claim it as their own. It's hard to imagine, but it does happen.

This one time I pieced the label into the back, which is a cool thing to do with a cloth label:

Which is awesome.

But I don't generally piece my backs - mostly I'm doing whole cloth or one seam backs.

Having not attached on the label pre-basting this time, once I do decide on a label, I'll have to reinforce the adhesive with hand stitching, which is not my favorite thing to do. Unless I write on the quilt. Which is an unnerving idea with my horrible handwriting.

 So, in this moment of indecision I've been looking at other people's solutions:

I got really excited about the dog that Adrianne from On the Windy Side used to label a recent baby quilt:

photo courtesy of Adrianne of On the Windy Side

The other option I adore is screen printing. Rossie labels hers with just her company name and the year completed:

Photo courtesy of Rossie Hutchinson

It's like branding a quilt, not in the modern sense but the cowboy sense.  Also I just love screen printing and having the ink already I should just do this and order a thermofax screen made for me. Once I decide what to put on it, or course.

But what do you put on a label? Mine have washing instructions and material used, which would be useful if I'm going to sell them but I don't actually expect to sell them. Though I think washing instructions are kind of necessary if you are giving it as a gift, too. But most of mine seem to be sticking around my house, and I know how to wash them.

Rachel at ps i quilt does handwritten labels:

photo courtesy of Rachel Griffith

These are attached fairly similarly to mine. I think these are adorable in their simplicity, and also have the bonus of letting you choose what pieces of the million pieces of information about construction and intent to include on the quilt. But being handwriting challenged myself, I'd have to find someone to help me out if I went that route, so it's not likely to be sweet and personal for me.

Christine Doyle presents a wide variety of label options in this post. Including embroidery, which is an option I am not prepared to consider myself. But I really dig the look of those computer printed tabs!

I love Katy Jones's labels from Spoonflower:

photo courtesy of Katy Jones

Like me, she's included washing instructions, and she discusses whether or not to date them. I believe dating them is important, for the history of the quilt, after all someone may want to know that. But probably putting down the day of the last stitch as I did on those two above is overkill.

Lostquilt.com has a long list of suggestions of what is necessary by way of label should a quilt go wandering off into the world. I like the city and state suggestion, but would balk at including my whole address. The thing is, I'm web searchable! I feel like people could find me if they need to.

So, I guess I'm just going to marinate on this for a bit, trying to combine legitimate information with an adorable animal... leaving space for an appended date, something that can pieced or printed, something that will work for all foreseeable situations, and hopefully come up with something I can be happy with for a while. That's not at all a tall order, right?