Finish Up Friday–The Holy Cross Quilt

This past winter/spring I was the helper teacher of the 4th Grade St. Thomas CCD class.  During lent we decided to work on a service project – a quilt. We had the kids each draw a cross onto a sheet of paper.  Then, they had to answer quiz questions about the Ten Commandments to figure out the order they were able to pick the fabric pattern for their cross. I pinned their drawings to the fabric they chose. Then I took them home, traced the crosses onto fusible and fused them to hand-dyed rectangles.  There are nine kids in my class – plus I made a cross for myself, the other teacher, and Diane (who volunteered to come and help teach the kids a blanket stitch). We taught the kids to blanket stitch applique their cross to the fabric.  They got as far as they could around the cross as time permitted in class.  When time was up, I took them home and finished the rest and made the blocks into a quilt! Our last class was this past Wednesday – so I had the quilt all ready except left some space for the kids to tie the quilt.  I wanted to show them as many parts of the quilting process as possible but still enable them to see the final quilt before it was donated to Project Linus. They also all signed a piece of fabric and came up with a name for the quilt – “The Holy Cross Quilt” so we could put a label on the back. I’ll be posting pictures of the kids with their blocks and the finish quilt soon hopefully.  I wanted to make sure to get permission from their parents before I do! Overall – this was a great project to work on with the fourth graders.  If I do it again in the future I would start it earlier in the year and just give them 10 or 15 minutes at the end of class to stitch while we reviewed the material we learned.  We tried to cram this in as little time as possible and you could tell it was a bit stressful.  But – from what I observed – the kids loved doing the project and were super excited and proud to see the final quilt.  Okay – well, I just got the okay from Abby’s mom so I wanted to include this!  Doesn’t she just look so happy and proud of her block!?  Great job Abby!