What's more fun than kids' art? Why kids' art made into a quilt, of course.
Dana, the mother of almost-5-year-old Emmeline (Emme for short) wrote me to help with a project for Emme's San Francisco preschool. Dana sent me a top pieced with playful fabrics framing abstract masterpieces by students in the Peacock class.
The children were given permanent fabric markers in basic bright colors to draw on white Kona cotton. They added their names in proud block letters. One parent pieced the back from the same fabrics used on the blocks. Dana then sewed up the top, alternating the kids' squares between sashing and log cabin squares to fit a 50-by-60-inch rectangle. For the quilting, Dana requested a simple (fast) allover panto, and "Labyrinth" by Jodi Beamish was just the ticket.
Why the rush? A fund-raising auction for the school in April. I'm thinking this will fetch a tidy little sum.
Studio note: The batting is 100% wool, provided by the customer, and I LOVE quilting on this wool. It's dense, yet light and really warm and makes a puffy surface without becoming stiff.
And here is the full-size result, with binding to be added by Dana.
So now I'm thinking about using a few of the many fabulous drawings done by my grandchildren to make a memory quilt for each of them. Instead of having them draw on fabric, I can scan existing work, which is on plain white paper, and print it out on my Printed Treasures sheets that go through an ink jet printer. Or maybe we can combine both techniques, to get more color on the drawings.
Anyhoo, thanks Dana, for a fun project!
