Finally, a quilt!

Actually, I had been working on a quilt, but not only am I slow but it also was a surprise so I didn't want to share any pictures until the gift was given.

After I agreed to be the quilt guild president, many members came up to me and said "I'd never be president because you have to make the next presidents quilt."  Wait, what?  Somewhere in the last 11 years of being a guild member it seems that the tradition of the guild president's bee making her a thank you quilt for being president had become solely the past presidents job.

Sigh.

While there are few instructions, the gist of it is that in January the past president (that would be me) puts out a call for blocks in the newsletter.  That would also mean I had to choose a block and a color scheme and write out the instructions too.

All the blocks get turned in by the June meeting and then the past president has until the September meeting to put the whole thing together.

I like to quilt a whole lot, but I am not the best at quick decisions.  Usually my quilts hang out at various stages for months or even years until inspiration strikes.   This pressure to finish was not helped along by the fact that the two previous past presidents are awesome and award winning quilters who made works of art.  

However, I plodded along and put together a nice top.  I stalled a bit at the quilting but finally figured out that if I resized by favorite bamboo quilting stencil the two sizes would work well in the light areas of the quilt.  I did have to do a bit of un-quilting until I got the thread colors just right but even that wasn't to bad.

Binding, I love.  It's true, the thing that seems to hang up the most quilters is the part I really love to do.

Nope, the part that stumped me to no end was the darn label.  Somewhere, some quilter declared that all quilts needed a label and quilters believed her.  Personally, I hate labels.  To me, no matter how nicely done they look like the label on a mattress.  A big old square afterthought slapped on.  Really, I don't care if people put fancy artwork around the edge, or heartwarming photographs of the quilt owner or even if they hand letter it in fancy calligraphy.  It always is a big old square of off-white or white fabric slapped on the backside of a quilt.  

When I was a new quilter I made a label for one quilt.  It was a baby quilt for my nephew.  I looked at it and thought it was really ugly.  That was it for me.  There are better options then a label and so I just say no to labels.

However, this was a guild thing for the guild president and I figured I had to "follow the rules" and cave on the label issue.

A good friend offered up a package of fabric sheets that go in the printer.  I found some free quilt label artwork online.  I added the appropriate text and pushed print.  Chomp, chomp, chomp.  The printer ate that fabric right up.

I tried again with the same results.

Grrr.  I thought perhaps it was because this particular brand of printer fabric was plastic backed.  My printer is nothing if not fussy.  So, off to the quilt shop to purchase a different brand.  Guess what the shop no longer carries?  They sent me and a 40% off coupon to the chain fabric store and thankfully they had the other brand of fabric sheets.

Home again.  Load the printer.  Pull up the document and press print.  Chomp, chomp, chomp .  Again my darn printer ate up the fabric sheets.

A very nice quilt shop owner suggested I clip the corners of the fabric sheet.  She even drew a diagram for me of how much to clip.

Nope, my printer ate that sheet up too.  In desperation (I only had two sheets left) I ironed the  smudged and wrinkled sheet of fabric smooth and whacked off more from the corners.

It worked!  Yippee!  And, to make it even more miraculous it printed on a non-smuged part of the fabric.

I peeled of the backing, soaked the fabric and did all the proper incantations to keep the specially formulated and pre-treated fabric from bursting into flames.  Then I tried to press the edges of the label under.

Scortchville.

Yep, half the label was now an unattractive brown color.  

This was about the time I decided to leave town to go quilting and eating.  

I came home ready to get that darn label, the bane of my quilting existence, done.  Oh, did I mention that my printer had run out of ink just before leaving town?  So, one trip to the office supply store.  Some time re-creating the label that I had thrown in the computer trash because I had printed it already and wouldn't need to keep it anymore.  Finally, finally I was ready to print.

Nothing.

Zip, nada, zilch.  Nothing happened when I tried to print.  

Seems when I went out of town my computer was upgraded and no longer recognized my troublesome printer.

Seriously, how can so many things stand in the way of printing a stupid label?

After whining, and saying naughty words and trying to get my computer to cooperate and bugging my husband at work I decided to just give up.  It's not like I wasn't already known at guild for being to upstart who does everything "wrong".  

Then a friend called and I whined at her.  Was I even smart enough while whining to think hey, she and her husband own a graphic design business?  Nope.  Too busy wallowing.  Then she suggested very generously that I send her the .pdf and bring over the fabric sheets and she could print it out on one of their printers.

Naturally her printer behaved and spit out the ugly label with nary a hitch.  I plopped myself down at her kitchen counter and just sewed on the label.  No soaking, no incantation and certainly no pressing!

In spite of the ugly label on the back, I think the quilt turned out really well.  I'm happy with the quilting and I must say it hangs darn flat and square.  If I had been smart enough to take a photograph at home with a tri-pod you would see that too.  Unfortunately, I didn't think of that and ended up taking a picture of it hanging on the wall at the guild meeting.  Still pretty flat but I cannot manage to take a straight shot ever.  So, things are a bit crooked because of me, not because the quilt is crooked.

The best part is, the quilt is done and delivered!  Oh, that and I'll never be guild president again so I'll never have to do this again either!

Back to quilting my own projects.

-- marcella