To-Do Tuesday 3-17-15 | The Great Quilt Label Fiasco

Happy Tuesday… and Happy St. Patrick’s Day!!

I finally finished the Radioactive Consequences/Spiderman quilt. I did have one major hiccup that set me back and put me in a real funk this week, but I overcame the challenge and am pleased with the result.

I used an online tutorial to print a label from my inkjet printer. As I was getting ready to piece it into my backing my husband suggested that I wash it ahead of time to test that the method would work. I assured him everything was fine, as I’d read quite a few blog posts that used the same method and all had great results. I was confident that their final suggestion of heat setting the label with an iron would ensure that the label would be fine, with minimal fading.

Do you know how much I hate it when the Mister is right… And I’m wrong? Thank goodness he’s not much of an “I told you so” kind of person.

When I took the quilt out of the first wash I was more worried about the red fabric continuing to bleed. While there was color on my color catchers, I was relieved to see that my black and white backing fabric was color-free. And then I saw my quilt label. I used all the curse words. Quietly. So the Mister wouldn’t hear what was going on. I teared up. The Mister asked how the quilt turned out after the wash. I ‘fessed up and told him I hated it when he was right. He told me he hated it when he was right too. About things like this. [He had to put that qualifier in there…naturally]. Commence week-long funk.

I washed the quilt one more time with a few more color catchers, dried it, folded it and put it away. I emailed my sister that the quilt was going to be late. I pouted on Instagram. I thought of a couple of ways to fix it and then put it out of my mind until two days ago. In the meantime the Mister researched what had gone wrong for me. Turns out a few printers use a water soluble ink and others use a pigment based ink. Guess we all know which one mine used.

I decided my first option at fixing this would be to use some pigment based archival quality pens to color in the shadow of the words that was left on the label. I was so thankful for my magnifying LED lamp and my 005 pen. They made a huge difference in coloring in the label. It was still rather difficult to work on because of the quilting bunching the fabric up and the previous wash & dry shrinking and giving the quilt that wrinkly look I love (unless I’m trying to perfectly color in letters). It worked out rather well and I heat-set the ink, threw it in the washer and crossed my fingers that this time it wouldn’t wash out.

You can imagine my trepidation pulling the quilt out of the washer. I was ecstatic to see that the ink stayed, with minimal fading! YES!! I’m taking pictures tomorrow and mailing this quilt off to my nephew. It’s late, but that’s okay!

I’m taking this week off. I have some spring cleaning I’d like to get done and I’ve been enjoying some time hanging out with my mister. I’ll be starting my other nephew’s Iron Man themed quilt next week, so a little break in between will be nice!

Enjoy your day and your week! I hope they’re great!

This week’s To-Do list:

• Relax!

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