5th Grade Raffle Quilt is On!

Coming Soon to Quilt Fabric: 5th Graders' Abstract Nature Paintings

I know you were all shaking your heads in pity when I told you I had agreed to make a class raffle quilt in three weeks with my son's 5th grade class.  It's not started yet, the kids don't know how to sew, there are no sewing machines at their school, and I have only very minimal class time with them.  Also Spring Break is next week.  But I like a challenge.

So my idea was to print students' original artwork directly onto fabric with those inkjet fabric sheets that go right into the printer.  Since we are in a bit of a time crunch, I talked with their art teacher to see whether they had already created anything for her class that would work for the quilt project.  She showed me these fantastic abstract paintings that our class made earlier in the school year incorporating leaves, flowers, and other items they collected outside the school.  I love the bright, saturated colors and the fact that each one is unique, but they are unified by a common theme and medium.  I think they will look great on fabric, don't you?  Well, I met with the students at lunch today to discuss the project, gave them some options for creating new art versus using the existing abstract paintings, and was DELIGHTED when they voted to use their abstract paintings.  We took them straight to the UPS Store to be scanned in (the paintings are larger than my scanner flat bed at home) and now, as long as I don't run into Unforeseen Difficulties during the printing process, I should be good to go.  Maybe I'll add some sashing strips to frame each block, but other than that, I'm planning to just sew them all together as simply as possible.

Depending on how much time I have when I get to the quilting phase, I might stitch in the ditch around blocks and then add free motion quilting within the blocks, or just quilt an allover grid, or (worst case scenario) tie the quilt with yarn if I'm REALLY running out of time. 

Cross your fingers that all goes well with the printer.  I bought a 25 pack of fabric sheets and I have 22 students, so that leaves me only three extra sheets for oopses and experimentation with printer settings.