PamelaQuilts: It's not finished till you add the label -

There is a whole lot of not finished going on around here, but I finally added the label to this quilt! I have more labels that need to be sewn on other quilts as well. don't know how I got so far behind, but my dining room is piled up with stacks of quilts that need labels, a couple of quilt sandwiches that need quilting and a few tops that are ready for basting. It's hard to know where to start when there is so much that needs doing!

I did start taking the binding off one of my old favorites that I'd like to get back on my bed this summer. I finished this quilt back in 1991, I don't know that my hand quilting will ever be as good as it was when I did this - younger eyes and hands!

This was my first hand quilted bed size quilt. It was made from a serial pattern in Quilter's Digest and after a seach of my blog it looks as though I have never actually written a post about it!

I can hardly believe this quilt is 27 years old. I use it regularly, and love how soft and cozy it is. The backing is a plain muslin, and the binding, unfortunately is a single fold bias binding which is now starting to wear badly on the outside fold. Luckily I have quite a bit of leftover binding that I have saved all these years so I can replace about half of it. Most of the wear seems to be confined to the top edge of the quilt, which makes sense - that's where it gets handled the most.

I've won a few ribbons on this quilt, including best of show at the local fair.

There's not much holding it together here!

This is the only binding I've had fail so far - I now mostly use a double fold (or french) binding, cut on the width of the fabric. Obviously a bias binding can wear out just as well as a straight of grain binding!

You can see that the fabric has faded a bit. Not bad because I do use this quilt every summer, and it is washed at least once each year with no special precautions!

I believe the rose color is actually a poly blend. I purchased all the fabrics at JoAnn's, and the top has held up quite well.

The quilting is so fine on this quilt. I think it is the best quilting I have ever done. I know that it took me about 14 months in all to piece and quilt this (because I wrote this on the back of the quilt - no label, but documented directly on the backing), and I am still in love with the results. I'm excited to replace the binding and continue to use my favorite quilt - I expect to be using it least another 27 years - and if I have to replace the binding again I think I could use muslin and it would look just fine.

I promise I'll get some more pictures of it when it's finished and write a longer post about it!

Linking up with Myra for Finished or Not Friday!