School of Fish Quilt for Teacher

My oldest child, Mercedi Rose, just finished up Kindergarten last week.  I can’t believe she’s already going to be in 1st grade!  (which means Capri will be in Kindergarten and 2 of the 3 will be in school full time – yikes!).  Anyway – she had a wonderful experience in Kindergarten including learning to read thanks to her fabulous teacher Mrs. McQueen.  I knew I wanted to do something special for her teacher who is also expecting her first baby, a boy, any day now.

So, I headed into Cedi’s school on the last Tuesday and interrupted the class to do a little project.  Now – I’ve never been the best with kids but now that mine are getting older I’m finding I’m more comfortable around them hence making me better with them.

My first step was to iron some hand-dyed fabric onto freezer paper and then cut them into 8” squares.  Then, I put together some paints, brushes and baby wipes and headed to Cedi’s school.  The kids’ came over in groups of 4 and we got all their hands printed onto the fabrics.  I added tails and fins to make them into fish!  Once the paint was dry I used a hot iron with a press cloth to set the paint.

It was easy-peasy to get each of the 16 kids to make a hand-print ‘fish’ block for their teacher.  It made me realize that maybe I missed my calling…elementary art teacher?

When I got home I added an eye and mouth too…Here’s Cedi’s hand!Now it was time to lay it out and put it together.  I have to remind you…I started this on a Tuesday…my goal was to finish it by Friday so the kids could all be there and give it to their teacher.  I couldn’t just sew all the blocks together…that would have been too simple.  So…I decided to use Marcia’s Zig Zag block to add some more to look at.  I laid out the blocks and the fabrics to zig zag onto them. Once I had the two sides (or three if it was a border) sew on, I wonkied them into new squares to.Here is the quilt all pieced together, basted and ready for quilting. It really went together quickly and I like the look of it. I used my Janome 6600 with a walking foot to quilt wavy lines or ‘waves’ onto the quilt top.  I debated not quilting through the hand prints but in the end I thought it would help make it more durable.  I bound it with a beautiful blue and purple hand-dye.

I also free-motioned Cedi’s teachers name into the quilt… “Mrs. McQueen’. And the school year… 2012-2013 Here is a picture of the class presenting the quilt to their teacher!

And here is the kids with their teacher and the quilt!

We are anxiously waiting the news of what they decided to name their little boy and see some pictures!  Maybe we can convince Mrs. McQueen to drop by ‘Kids in the Garden’ with the new babe to show off too…