Quilted and Bound - and Labeled?

As quilt-makers we very often think of a project as ‘done’ when the piecing is complete. The color and design choices have been made, we’ve cut up our fabrics, sewn the pieces back together and the finished quilt top - hopefully - is a success.

Many quilting friends of mine have stacks of finished quilt tops, all waiting for those final steps of basting, quilting and binding to take place.

Those same friends also tell stories of stitching on the binding at the last minute, just in time for the quilt to be gifted or entered in a show.

But there’s one final, final step that is too often overlooked - the label!

(Here I should admit that this blogpost should be filed under the ‘Do as I say, not as I do’ category because although I fully believe everything I’m about to recommend, I too often neglect to attach labels to my own quilts).

At a recent quilt show I went looking for labels. With the help of the white-gloved docents I found some wonderful examples of ways to label a quilt. I also found many quilts had no label at all - just the temporary paper label required by the exhibit organizer. A further hunt around Instagram brought me a good dozen ideas of what information to include, and different techniques to use in making labels.