Welcome my Guest Blogger - Sandy Fitzpatrick!

Welcome my Guest Blogger - Sandy Fitzpatrick!
 

Sandy Fitzpatrick of Hissyfitz Designs is an applique quilt pattern designer whose goal is to get as many of the quirky designs, that are spinning around in her head, down on paper for you to enjoy! Her fusible applique patterns are full of whimsy and will certainly bring a smile to your face. Sandy strives to make her full-sized patterns easy to follow and fun to make. Her classes, which focus on machine applique and free-motion quilting, are equally fun! 

Let's give a great big welcome to Sandy!
 

Hello everyone! I’m so excited to be here with you today as a guest blogger! If we’ve not met before, let me tell you a little about myself. I’ve been sewing for most of my life, making my clothes as I was growing up, even making my wedding gown. When my children were small I made hand smocked dresses for my two girls and even cute little smocked shirts for my son to wear with knickers. The girls loved the attention they got from wearing their hand-made garments, my son, not so much. I loved coordinating their outfits for special occasions such as Easter and Christmas but the year I decided to make coordinating sailor outfits and they ended up looking like the Von Trapp family, my five year old son had had enough! (My husband actually had to pay him $1.00 to wear his Easter outfit to church that year – Argh!)

I continued to sew for my girls, but eventually they, too, outgrew the desire to wear “hand-made” clothing. It was then that I decided to try my hand at quilting and was excited to find this new world for my creativity. I started out making a few traditional pieced quilts but decided to add in a little applique of my own designs. That’s when I realized I had “found my home”. My love of sewing and my love of drawing seemed to “click” and soon friends were asking me to create patterns of my designs. I tried to work a day job and design patterns on the side but soon realized, that if I truly wanted to make it at this designing thing, then something had to give…so I gave up my day job.

People like the fact that my patterns are a little “outside the box”. I recently had someone tell me that I didn’t just think outside the box, I didn’t even know where the box was. That pretty much sums it up.     

I vend at a lot of quilt shows and travel quite a bit teaching workshops so I know how important it is to label my quilts with my contact information. I thought a little tutorial on how I like to label my quilts might help you out as well. Even if you don’t want to put your contact info on your label, it’s still really important to label your quilt with the name of the quilt, who made it, and maybe even the location and date.

I’ve tried all kinds of methods and found this to be a quick and easy way that works for me. I like to use inkjet printable fabric from Printed Treasures or June Tailor. You can also use this printable fabric to print photos to make a memory quilt.

The first thing you need to do is generate a label including your information, on your computer. You can use a simple program such as Microsoft Word or any word program that you are comfortable with. I usually find a font that I like and create the information in a Word document. If you want to jazz it up a little by adding some color to your font which coordinates with your quilt design, even better.

 

When you are happy with the way your document looks, print it out on the inkjet printable fabric and remove the paper backing.Next, iron a piece of fusible web (my favorite is Heat ‘n Bond Lite) to the back of your label area, making sure that it is slightly larger than your actual label.

Cut out your label using a rotary cutter or scissors, peel the paper backing from the Heat ‘n Bond Lite and using an iron on “silk” setting, iron your label to one corner of your backing fabric, I usually iron it to the bottom left corner.

 

 Make sure it is in an area that will receive lots of machine quilting and not too close to the edge so that it doesn’t get cut off when you are ready to square up your quilt for binding.

Now you are ready to layer your backing, batting and quilt top to baste it together for quilting. As you add your machine quilting, your quilting stitches will stitch through the label making it a permanent part of your quilt. I’m sure you have heard horror stories of quilts being lost or stolen from quilt shows or even taken out of cars. By using this method to add your label, it will be very difficult for someone to remove your label and claim the quilt as their own. They would have to remove quite a few stitches plus tear the label off the back since it is fused on. Not an easy task.

 Whatever method you choose to use to create your label is a step in the right direction, not only for security’s sake but as a historical account as well. Now, get on out there and do your own little "Jiggity-Jig" as you add this much needed documentation to your quilts! 

Sandy, what a great tip you have shared! You have shown us how easy it is to label our quilts which is of course so important for all the reasons you stated. Thank you so much for that and for being a Guest Blogger!

I hope you enjoyed this blog today.  Don't forget to sign up for my newsletter as I offer specials every month. Just add your name to the list. 

Until next time...

Nan