a West U quilt

Welcome to my post for the fall Blogger's Quilt Festival hosted by Amy of Park City Girl. The quilt I wish to feature is one that was made especially for the 80th anniversary of ...

West University Elementary School.

This is a T-shirt quilt featuring t-shirts from school spirit shirts as well as many school activities (book fair, auction, carnival, etc.) My challenging task was to assemble this diverse collection into one cohesive quilt, and finish it in time for the PTO's fundraising auction (nothing like a firm deadline to crunch then rush one's creative energy).


After much struggling with a uniform block size, I chose to trim each item, leaving a 1" - 2" border framing the individual logos. Next stumbling block was to add borders to these trimmed blocks. Could I find one fabric to use for all the blocks, uniting the quilt? No. Instead I opted to frame each logo with a themed print in colors to match. This required shopping for fabrics such as hot-air balloon, jungle, & golf prints (a delightful task). With school colors of red, white and blue, the spirit shirts were the easiest to frame. As I pieced the fabrics around the t-shirt logos, the blocks grew larger, still keeping their different sizes and shapes. Sewing the blocks together into one quilt top required more puzzling and thinking. Look closely to spy the spacer bars of school-themed prints I added to fill in gaps. The final outer border, an alphabet print, unified the diverse blocks into one quilt.

Curious note: Some of the blocks are not t-shirts. They are scanned and printed images from an original item loaned for this copying purpose. One logo was actually cut-out from a baseball cap ... can you guess which one that is?

I must extend special Thank you's to:
Kay for printing the computer transfers;
Carrell for donating many of her own t-shirts;
Avril and Catherine who worked tirelessly remembering which events were missing and hunting down someone with the logo to share.
and last but not least, Thank you to Mike Walton of Astro Quilting Systems (713-522-7876) for the custom machine quilting that finishes this school quilt.

For all my friends and acquaintances .... no, I do not make t-shirt quilts, but fear not ... I have not one, but two friends that do. If you are interested in turning your child's keepsake t-shirts into a one-of-a-kind memory quilt please contact either of these friends:

Sharon Dixon's Katy T-shirt Quilts
and
Betty Baker's T-Shirt Quilts of Texas

Last note: the quilt was not complete at the time of the school auction (Hurricane Katrina and a broken arm interrupted the progress that fall). Nevertheless, the quilt-top was a hot item at the auction that attracted many, until the bidders united to purchase the quilt and donate it back to the school! I could not be more pleased! My quilt now hangs in the front entry of West University Elementary School.

One of my favorite quilts

I love the challenge of making quilts as a collaborative effort, especially when the quilt is meant as a gift to someone special. This is one of my favorite quilts, because it was a gift from the hearts of many to one recipient, to honor her for her years in teaching. It uses artwork made by non-quilters (in this case - children) which is a fun collaboration (try it sometime!). But this quilt is not the first group quilt nor the first quilt featuring children's art that I have made. The first such quilt was one created especially for Grandma Shirley Burkom in honor of her retirement as the Director of the Becker Early Childhood Center, where my children attended preschool. It just so happens that she retired the very year that my boys were graduating from PreK. (Grandma Shirley, I need to get a new photo of your quilt to add here!). I went on to make a quilt for one of my sons' Kindergarten teachers, a wedding gift from the class (Kari, I'm way over due for a visit to you & would love a photo of your quilt to put here!). I even made a quilt for the WUE school auction one year. It featured many many blocks of kid-art in bright colors (third photo, this time needed from Melinda Mogas. Please Melinda?).

But enough of other quilts that I don't have photos of ... The quilt that I am featuring now was initially blogged about it nearly a year ago, shortly after its completion. I removed the blog post almost immediately after posting it, as the quilt was meant to be a surprise and there was a great fear that the surprise would be discovered too early! So I am happy to feature my original post about this lovely quilt that has been given to Reverend Jan Imig, from the many school children at First Methodist Church.

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What do you give someone to honor her for the years of caring and dedication she has given to your religious school program? My friend Sandy Faison had a great idea: make a quilt filled with art by the children. Jan Imig -- I hope you know how loved you are! Here is your quilt, made by the school children at First Methodist Church, and with Sandy's inspiration and organization:



Sandy chose a biblical theme -- very appropriate considering the reason behind the quilt. Each age/grade level worked on a different block. Here is the beginning, the First day of Creation by the Two-year-old class:



The second day, representing Sky and Water, is by the Three-year-old class:



The third block is the Third day of Creation, art by the Preschool class:



The fourth block, the 4th day of Creation, is by the Kindergarten class:



The fifth day of Creation has art by the First Graders at First Methodist.



The sixth day of Creation features art by the Second grade class:



The seventh block, the 7th day of Creation, has the honor of representing all the children that do not have their own block on this quilt: families with children who have already passed through the classes at First Methodist and families with young children who have yet to start their journey here.



Once the seven days of creation were used, Sandy selected three more biblical stories for the 3 additional classes. The eighth block represents the story of Noah with artwork by the Third grade class:



The ninth block, the Nativity, is by the Fourth grade class:



The tenth and last block is Jesus and the Disciples by the Fifth grade class:



All the artwork above was transfered to fabric by Original Works, the original art-based fundraiser celebrating children's creativity since 1989. For more information, here is a link to their website: www.originalworks.com/

The biggest struggle with making this quilt was deciding on a lay-out for the 10 blocks. Ten blocks seperates easily into 2 rows of 5 blocks each, but would you want a wide and squatty quilt to hang on the wall? Or how about a tall and skinny quilt? After much pondering and playing with ideas on paper and in my head, I came up with the above layout. I like how this keeps the seven Days of Creation together. Next, choosing fabrics and border-widths. After assembling the blocks and borders into a quilt top, quilting is added, unique patterns to complement the individual blocks. The finishing steps are to add binding and a label .... The quilt was completed and delivered to Sandy on Saturday evening, Aug 24th. In fact it is being presented to Reverend Jan Imig during the "Welcome Back" program at First Methodist Church-Downtown Houston on Sunday, August 25, 2008. [Note: I believe the actual presentation happened on a different day, a tad later than the original plan.]

By the way, this was my 3rd completed UFO Olympic piece during last summer's UFO Olympic games that I participated in (just couldn't blog about it until AFTER the quilt had been given to Jan!

Bloggers Quilt Festival

In honor of the Quilt Festival happening in Chicago, April 17 to 24, Amy of Park City Girl blog came up with a fun new idea ... She is hosting the First Annual Bloggers Quilt Festival!

Click here to read details about this event .