Button’s Globe {Teacher Quilt}

This year, Button and I got together in April to plan his thank you quilt to his teacher.

Button requires a little extra patience and care at school and we were grateful, as a family, for her extra kindness and support. We pulled out the Spelling Bee Book by Lori Holt that I had made the Joy pillow, butterfly and fox pillows.  I had originally planned to do letters, but he fell in love with the Vintage Life layout with the globes since his favorite subject seems to be geography.

He immediately became “bossy” and insisted on the fabric choices he pulled from my stash. 

I quickly was able to piece the blocks together. 

There was a bit of a slow down while I chose what to do with the “wire”.
I settled on a twisted chainstitch with a brassy gold perle cotton. 

We ran to the store to buy some sashing and border fabric.
He spotted the dotted blue fabric from the heart globe and we soon had a finished top to quilt. 

I was excited to be able to use my new Prostitcher program to do the crosshatch quilting on the globes. 

And also able to have fun and do free motion quilting everywhere else.  Stippling in the block backgrounds, wishbone in the sashing, and wild feathers in the borders. 

His backing choice wasn’t exactly what I would have chosen, but I just couldn’t argue because he was so determined to make decisions about her quilt.

We had fun digitizing his heart and signature for the quilt label. 

And I loved how excited he was to gift it to her. 

Quilt Stats:

Measures: Lap Size 

Pattern: Vintage Life by Lori Holt

Fabrics: Various scraps and stash. Sashing, Border, Backing and binding Joann Fabrixs. 

Quilting: Crosshatch and free motion on HQ Avante and Pro-stitcher

It was fun to see her open it

and also to see the reactions of his classmates and her!

And now it is summer....his favorite and my time of the year!!!

Gift Box {Quilted Potholders}

"A gift consists not in what is done or given, but in the intention of the giver or doer."

As a parent, I often find it difficult to come up with gifts for teachers.  Particularly at Christmas time.  I grew up watching other kids give their teachers gifts for the holidays, but my mother never sent me along with any, so my frame of reference as a parent myself was, basically, clueless. When the older boys were all stacked together, I often was overwhelmed thinking about the monumental task of curating several gifts for several teachers they each had and never took it on.

When Button came along, I made a decision that it would be an area I would work on making more of an effort.

This year, Button as a teacher who seems game to take anything I send her way. This holiday, I happened upon this awesome Mason jar pre-filled with cookie mix at Target.  Just eggs and water were needed to finish them.  I thought it would be nice to send along some Potholders.

I did a fabric pull of some of my leftover Christmas fabric scraps, most from my Blizzard Quilt.

I found a quilt block that appealed to me at Fort Worth Fabric Studio HERE.

I definitely went off grid after her block instructions to make potholders that protect the back of your hands. I affectionately call them my potholder flaps.  I *may* have a tendency to burn the back of my hands on my oven. 

A lot.

The flap and the actual potholder each have a layer of Insul-brite and batting.  I quilted them very simply because it can get quite puffy with all the layers.

I always add hanging loops before I attach my binding to the back.

His teacher really was pleased  and mentioned at the Christmas party that she was hoping that I would make something for her. So glad I did!

While I was at it, I was feeling disappointed that I didn't finish all the Christmas ideas for our own home, so I made a set for myself along with some simple coasters for our family room (tutorial HERE).