Jack's 5th grade class made a quilt!

Jack's elementary school is having an auction to raise funds for the school. These big auctions happen every few years and when they do, lots of effort goes into the planning. Each class was asked to provide a class art project to the auction. Believe me, I did ask if others wanted to coordinate something, but low and behold, it turned out that the other Moms thought a quilt sounded great! ;-)

I didn't mind because my dear friend, Rachelle, has a daughter in Jack's class so this meant we could work on this together. We did have to factor in her new baby being born during this same time so she had quite a bit going on to say the least!

We live in a coastal town and decided to go with a nautical theme. We knew 5th graders are capable at hand stitching so our thought was to have them stitch a shape on a white background. Here is their finished quilt!

It ended up bigger than originally planned. It measures 108 x 70. I used most all of my nautical fabrics that I've purchased over the years including the Going Coastal line which I gave myself for Christmas two years ago. (You know what I'm talking about, don't laugh!) I also bought some fabric on line to supplement what I had and hit the 40% off rack at my LQS for the yellow fabrics seen on the back side. The rest of the fabric on the back is from my stash. Some parents donated money which covered the cost of the newly purchased fabrics, batting and pellon.

This was the mock-up I brought in the day they started stitching.

I should point out that the kids were tasked with sketching nautical objects. We went through all of the submissions and settled on the shapes you see below. Rachelle and I then traced them on Pellon fusible web and ironed them on fabrics. We cut them all out and brought them to class for the kids to select what shape they wanted to stitch. I took in my design board, it worked out great!

We brought our irons and the kids ironed on their chosen shape to the background. They chose their thread color and threaded their needle, then went to their seat to stitch away.

I cut some random squares of coastal fabric to be the "in between" blocks and brought those to so they had an idea of what it would look like all stitched together. Some kids zipped right through this and had beautiful, small, even stitches. Others had larger stitches that were still fine. A few pulled too tightly on the thread and we had a mess on our hands! Ideally, a parent assisting each child or a small group of them would have been the way to go but this assistance was not available so we winged it.

They all tried very hard and enjoyed posing in front of their masterpieces!

Back home now I played with a layout and stitched the top together.

Then I used my mathematically challenged method to make the back. I made sure the blocks covered the front! :-). (Yep, it's big enough!)

Duke settled in for some quilting time.

Rachelle made the binding which was awesome because by this point I was so ready to turn this in! She used the fabrics in the quilt and she cut each fabric the same length (12 inches or so, then a new fabric) and sewed them together. I would have never made it so perfectly spaced in fabric changes so this was great!

Back to class for some pictures! Jack and I held it up and when the class walked in, kids started yelling and pointing, "there's mine!" - which I loved.

This is the block that Jack stitched! Ahem....he was one of the better stitchers!! Go Jack! He decided to add the extra white decorative stitches. Inside my head I was saying, "but wait, that isn't the plan", but out of my mouth came, "thanks for the extra touch, Jack!"

Duke helped me with an at home photo op, as well. It IS rare that I finish something so this called for Duke-quilt pictures!

Wake up Duke, it's picture time!

The back sides!!

The collage of pics for the kids.

I turned it in today! The quilt will be on display at the school and is posted on the school Facebook page. Parents who aren't going to the auction can bid on it ahead of time and that becomes the starting bid at the live auction. The auction is April 6th. Fingers crossed it brings in some $$$!

Kris