My daughter attended her last day of kindergarten a couple of weeks ago. It was a sad day. Most kids are probably so excited for summer to start that they aren't that sad when the school year is over. But my daughter loved her teacher so much, she never wanted it to end. I am usually not super sentimental, but even I teared up a bit as we got in the car to go home on the last day. And 2 weeks later she is still talking about her teacher...making up songs about her and writing her notes. It is amazing the difference a great teacher can make in the life of a child! And I couldn't think of a better way to let a fabulous teacher know how much she is appreciated than by making her a quilt!
The idea for this quilt actually came from a picture of a rug I saw on a facebook swap group! It was black and white, but I thought the design would look cool as a scrappy quilt. I don't know why but I have been loving this type of quilt lately. It is a lot like this quilt I made last year. Since I have a slightly one track mind, I'm plotting a couple more that are similar. :)
Since this quilt was for my daughter's teacher, I let her help as much as she would. I consulted her on the design ("Looks great, mom"--that is almost always what she says when I ask her what she thinks of a quilt) and then once I had most of it laid out on the design wall, she came in and said, "I really want some hearts on it!" Well luckily there were already hearts! I like that they are kind of broken so they are not super obvious! :)
The fabrics for this quilt are Lottie Da and True Colors by Heather Bailey for Free Spirit. I love all of it! I love the colors and the prints are just fun. Plus, I think busy, multicolored but coordinating fabrics make great scrappy quilts, so this line was perfect. And I found a sweet deal on a fat eighth pack of Lottie Da so fabric selection was a no-brainer. I threw in the True Colors because they matched and because the more fabrics you have, the easier it is to make it random! The solid is Bella Apron strings Ivory. It looks a little yellow on it's own but was the perfect color to match!
For the quilting I chose a fast feathery swirly pantograph. It is called "Oh my Feathers" by Lisa Calle. I think it was perfect for this quilt!
I ended up piecing the back...I don't usually love pieced backings that much, but I wanted it to match and was trying to clearance shop for the fabric, and let my daughter pick it out, etc. etc. so I just had to take what I could get! I didn't have enough of each fabric to do what I had originally planned so I decided to put a heart on the back to fill some space! My daughter helped pick and arrange the fabrics for the heart!
I photographed this quilt at my father-in-law's swanky new condo. I was excited when he moved in because the place is a quilt picture goldmine! The pool area had this great iron gazebo--so fun!
I bound the quilt in green since green is the teacher's favorite color. And I don't usually label the quilts I make, but this one had to have one! I made the design in Inkscape, printed it out and traced it with a fine-point sharpie marker onto fabric backed with fusible web. I had my daughter write her name on a piece of paper and then traced it onto the label. Sharpie markers bleed super easy, so I didn't want to risk ruining it with big black bleed marks! The little hearts are appliqued on and I stitched the whole thing down by hand once it was ironed on. Kinda fun.
My daughter took the quilt with her to school on the last day. Her teacher loved it and said she would keep it forever! Good! We will love her forever!! :)
