The four year old classes do a paint hand print on muslin when they're learning about the letter Q, and the teachers ask the parents and/or grandparents of the children in the classes if someone can make the squares into a quilt.
Almost every year there is at least one class with a quilty mom or grandmom, so usually we'd only have to do one. A couple of years ago we had to do both of them! This generally isn't a huge problem, except when we don't get a lot of advance notice... like this year.
This year, one class needed a 'foster-quilter', and graduation is this Friday, May 23. I received an email on May 7 asking if we could do a quilt. Now these quilts are generally small in size, more a wall hanging than a blanket. BUT some things can complicate the process:
- The teachers generally use unbleached muslin. Sometimes it's pretty rough stuff. One year it shredded pretty horribly while I was cutting it down. The other thing is, the color is so anti-anything you find in kids' prints for sashing and borders.
- They use whatever color paint trips their triggers. This year, one class used only orange and teal paint, making it easy to match to some solid-looking fabrics. This was, unfortunately, NOT the one I was working on.
- The teachers write the names of the students on the squares with a sharpie marker. One class wrote the name right below the thumb print. That was so cool. That was NOT the one I was working on.
- The muslin squares do not all start out life the same size. This year, the set I was working on had one square that was so not square, I ended up cutting down all the other squares so much that it was a near thing to get the hand print and the name all within the block and not in the seam allowance.
The school will raffle the quilt off on Friday and funds will go toward some project they have going for the kids.
Here's the results of this year:
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| My attempt to fill the empty square since there were only 15 in the class. I wish I'd had time to get more creative... |
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| This was as small as I could go without cutting off names or fingers! I guess I could have moved his name up, but the handprint was so close to the top, it was a near thing. |
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| So many colors makes picking a border a challenge. |
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| Suzi channel quilted in the border and around the blocks, then I ran a line of stitches around the hands. |
If I had had just a bit more time, I would have unearthed a lamb embroidery, but with the date fast approaching it just didn't work out. I am sure that while the teachers appreciate the output, they really don't have an idea about how long any of this takes, all of it done while you're working full time and taking care of your own obligations.
All I can say is, thanks for keeping the class sizes small!! But I am counting this as a finish for 2014.
One down... sew on!
