Party Quilts - Signature Quilts

Have you made a quilt that was signed at a party?

I'ld love to hear about your experiences!

Thanks so much!
Natalie
(NS)

Well, I made a quilt out of fabric which was signed at a wedding
reception - does that count? Or did you want infor on the finished quilt
being signed?

I'll pretend my version is ok:

I don't have a picture yet, but I think I'm going to take the unfinished
film in tomorrow - I can't wait for a bunch of those pics.

I wrote the bride's mother to get her blessing on doing this at the
receptions :-)

I then took Kona Cotten Snow (nearly white) and cut pieces, then I
ironed freezer paper to the back, and used masking tape to stick each
piece onto an index card. The masking tape covered the seam allowance +
some extra. When you remove the masking tape, you either have to be
_really_ careful (x100, no, I wasn't careful) or you loose a bit of
fabric there.

Then I brought all the cards and a whole bunch of pigma pens in various
colours in a pretty basket to the reception. I got seated with _the_
other quilter(!), who then helped go round to all the tables after the
dinner and get everyone to sign.

I took the pieces home, let them rest (I did read through them, great
fun), pressed them to heat set. And over the course of many months I got
the quilt done. My excuse was that I waited for a _long_ time for the
bride and groom to collect a few additional sigs from people who could
not make it to the wedding.

Having learned from a previous experince, I put a hanging sleeve on the
quilt before giving it to Penny and Jeremy, however Jeremy decided on
the spot that it was a cuddle quilt, not a wall hanging. Guess I'll
never get that one right...

Bottom line, they _love_ it. They spent more than an hour reading and
saying, oh look at what x wrote. Some of it related to only one of them,
some was for both. There was Japanese writing and a thumbprint from a
baby. So not just signatures, but greetings too.

Oh, and Penny and Jeremy signed it too. In fact, that was Penny's first
signature with her new surname. I thought that was pretty cool.

My biggest problem was figuring out a setting for the blocks, since I
ended up with I think 94 squares. In the end I put them on point and had
an empty larger square in the middle where I free motion quilted around
the fishies in the batik (fish and water was the main theme).

Was that the kind of stuff you wanted to know?


Hanne in London

not a quilt, but a friend of mine had all the 5 yr olds at her child's party
"sign" a tablecloth that was on the gift table. She then embroidered over
the "signatures" and messages for posterity's sake.

I know lots of ppl have done siggy quilts here for big occasions though.
Seems Lots of planning needs to go ahead of it!

--
-- Kellie
kjbeanne at yahoo dot com
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/berger....net/my_photos

"Scorpio" wrote in message
oups.com...
Have you made a quilt that was signed at a party?

I'ld love to hear about your experiences!

Thanks so much!
Natalie
(NS)

Ohmygosh! Yes!

What size blocks did you use?

I can't wait to see your photos!

That's interesting, about putting the blocks and stuff on each table...


We were thinking about having a long table outside of the main room,
for during the cocktail hour...
Thank you so very much for all your thoughts and details!

NS

Scorpio wrote:
Ohmygosh! Yes!

What size blocks did you use?

I used sort of like a rail fence block with a dark strip at the top,
then the sig strip, then a lighter strip.
As far as I remember, each strip was cut 5" by 2" (for a finished 4.5"
square) - WARNING - it is Sunday night, I've made up two exam papers
this weekend and my maths might be bad. Like I said I cut the sig strips
generously.

I can't wait to see your photos!

Me neither :-)

That's interesting, about putting the blocks and stuff on each table...

We were thinking about having a long table outside of the main room,
for during the cocktail hour...

I was a little - actually a lot - worried about getting everybody. This
way, basically each table had someone who was responsible enough to try
and get everyone to do a piece. The best man also made an announcement
that there would be a quilt to sign (not entirely true, but he said
something about it). The setting was a lot of tables with 8 people on
each, so going to each table to explain just seemed like it might work.
And for me it did.

Thank you so very much for all your thoughts and details!

Any time! I can't usually help out with the on-topic questions, so I'm
happy to say that at least this one I have tried before :-)


Hanne in London

Thanks for writing in!

NS


Kellie J. Berger wrote:
not a quilt, but a friend of mine had all the 5 yr olds at her
child's party
"sign" a tablecloth that was on the gift table. She then embroidered
over
the "signatures" and messages for posterity's sake.

I know lots of ppl have done siggy quilts here for big occasions
though.
Seems Lots of planning needs to go ahead of it!

--
-- Kellie
kjbeanne at yahoo dot com
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/berger....net/my_photos

"Scorpio" wrote in message
oups.com...
Have you made a quilt that was signed at a party?

I'ld love to hear about your experiences!

Thanks so much!
Natalie
(NS)

I did a signature quilt for my dad's 80th birthday in
Nov. I didn't have folks sign at the party though.
I sent out packages of prepared fabric, pen, instructions
and SASE for return. I learned a few things. (this was
all family so you know the flakes before you start)

-The pens love to get caught up in the mail machines.
You can pay more for them to be hand stamped but it
didn't matter. Mail clerks at two different PO's said
they would go through fine but several didn't. Follow
up to be sure they get to the destination.
-Give folks more time than you expect they need but give a
deadline.
-Plan on having to coax the flakes.
-Include extras for mistakes/practice.
-include your address, phone and e-mail.
-check the pens, even new ones before sending.
One of the pigmas I sent was bad. (it was in original pkg)
-give yourself plenty of time to put the quilt together.
-put some blanks in the quilt for those who were missed

I think about.com had a page of ideas. I used a star pattern
since my dad is an astrologer. Folks had a fun time looking
for their names once the quilt was done. For me the whole
thing was a pretty fun experience. I talked to some old family
folks I hadn't talked to in a good while. I enjoyed putting it
together and dad seems to like it.

HTH, Taria

Taria-

Thanks so much!

The details are really helpful.

Also, you are the second person to suggest the Pigma pens and I've
never really used fabric pens before so that's really helpful.

I'm sure it turned out beautiful! Do you have any photos?

Thanks again!
NS


taria wrote:
I did a signature quilt for my dad's 80th birthday in
Nov. I didn't have folks sign at the party though.
I sent out packages of prepared fabric, pen, instructions
and SASE for return. I learned a few things. (this was
all family so you know the flakes before you start)

-The pens love to get caught up in the mail machines.
You can pay more for them to be hand stamped but it
didn't matter. Mail clerks at two different PO's said
they would go through fine but several didn't. Follow
up to be sure they get to the destination.
-Give folks more time than you expect they need but give a
deadline.
-Plan on having to coax the flakes.
-Include extras for mistakes/practice.
-include your address, phone and e-mail.
-check the pens, even new ones before sending.
One of the pigmas I sent was bad. (it was in original pkg)
-give yourself plenty of time to put the quilt together.
-put some blanks in the quilt for those who were missed

I think about.com had a page of ideas. I used a star pattern
since my dad is an astrologer. Folks had a fun time looking
for their names once the quilt was done. For me the whole
thing was a pretty fun experience. I talked to some old family
folks I hadn't talked to in a good while. I enjoyed putting it
together and dad seems to like it.

HTH, Taria

"Scorpio" wrote in message
oups.com...
Have you made a quilt that was signed at a party?

I'ld love to hear about your experiences!

Thanks so much!
Natalie
(NS)


I have done at least 4 of these ... The first one was a fundraiser and I
pieced starlike blocks using a very light fabric for the background -- not
muslin or solid white but close to it. People paid $1 to sign their names.

The second one was a memory quilt for a young person who died in an auto
accident and I used very light borders and also light fabrics in the blocks.
People tended to write messages rather than just their names. IIRC I used a
beige solid which I think was called paperbag.

The third one was for my daughters graduation from high school (oh good
grief -- she has since graduated college and it's not backed and quilted
yet -- eeek) and in that one I used the light fabric as wide borders, the
blocks were photo transfers and her friends wrote messages in the borders. I
think I used a very light fossil fern for the borders.

I also did a simple rail fence for a 3rd grade class who patiently listened
to a short lecture on quilts and then they got to sign "their" quilt.

So all of these were signed at something ressembling a party ...

The one thing I did in all cases, was to iron freezer paper to the back of
the quilts before letting anyone write on them. While this did make the
larger quilts crunchy and cumbersome, it did keep the ink from spreading. I
also provided the pens and kept an eagle eye out for anyone approaching with
their own pen in hand. I had a couple of scraps ironed to freezer paper for
people to experiment with -- basically no one bothered to do that. I used
pigma pens and maybe another indelible brand. The pigmas seemed to work
well. None of the quilts were washed after the sigs and quilting so I have
no idea how the sigs would hold up if they were.

I did notice in all cases, that people sort of detoured around the table the
quilt was on until I strongarmed one or two people into writing on the quilt
and then there was a screaming mob all wanting to sign :-)

I think I have a picture of the memory quilt somewhere and maybe the
fundraiser -- I'll have to plow thru acres of forgotten disk space and see
:-)

Ellen

I've done two....

One, the whole top was assembled. There were 3.5" squares in the center, a
white band (where everyone signed), some fabric that looked like boxed
chocolates, more of the 3.5" squares, then more boxed chocolate. Took it to
the party, set up tables, had brown pigma pens for all to sign. I only wish
that I had put it on freezer paper, but don't know how well that would have
stayed on w/ all of the handling that it got. Maybe some lightweight
interfacing on the white instead since I machine quilted it anyways...

The other was squares cut out and fused on to freezer paper and fabric
paints. The fabric paints don't dry fast enough to be able to carry the
blocks away after the party. But boy, did we get some fun blocks!

Both were for guy's 50th birthdays.......

Cappy
"Scorpio" wrote in message
oups.com...
Have you made a quilt that was signed at a party?

I'ld love to hear about your experiences!

Thanks so much!
Natalie
(NS)