Teacher gifts

Hey there! The end of the school year has come and gone (for my 3 kiddos at least). I like to make my kids teachers a hand made gift as a thank you for spending so much time with my children this year. We are blessed to have outstanding teachers and a fine school to send our kids to. There was a time when I first started quilting that I felt all teachers needed a quilt for a gift, but I had to make that stop after about 3 years. It was getting too hard to make 3 quilts right at the end of the year (heaven forbid I ration my quilting time for them throughout the year!). This year I made 4 zipper bags and one quilt. I was quite thrilled with the way I made the bags and may actually make more to put in my shop in this same manner.

I took pictures of the process while I was making them, but I used my phone and put them on instagram and facebook instead of taking the pictures with my normal camera so I could blog about them. I am sure there is a way to make the pictures go from my camera to my computer, but I just don't know how.

I took these pictures on the way to school to give them away. Any way I quilted a large improv piece and quilted it with my long arm and then cut it into 4 pieces with which to make the bags. In the past I would have quilted 4 different individual little pieces and made them into the bags. Here is a link to the pictures on instagram.  The pictures make more sense than my trying to describe them. Anyway We filled the little box bags with goodies and gave them away to the teachers.

For my middle sons teacher we made a quilt. My son and I worked on this one together. Again the pictures are on instagram. He picked the fabric and he did the layout and chatted away while I was doing the piecing. Obviously it is another scrappy trip along quilt. If you have not made one of these tops and would like to, it is crazy simple and quite fast to assemble. Bonnie has the tutorial as well as about a zillion others over on her blog Quiltville Quilps and Snips. I love her blog and I get lost when I visit looking around.

I love the way I quilted this one if I do say so myself. I used an Abundant Feather as an edge to edge design. I have several different versions of similar feathers available if you are interested in this type of quilting. The fabric was quite traditional and special, so I went all out with the quilting.

I have been saving this fabric for something special for years. Those of you who are fabric hoarders like myself may recognize it...Tiny Lecien flowers. Lecien is one of my very favorite fabric manufacturers. Anyway I have been keeping an eye on this stack of fabric for literally years. I was quite thrilled to use it for such a special woman who inspired my little man to love reading and finally get a good foundation under his feet. She was able to break through his daydreaming with her love of teaching. She was able to do this while dealing with her own sadness after her father passed on. Thank you Jackie!

Here is the back of the quilt...umm I love those feathers! They took so much thread though. So if you want these feathers or any of the ones similar they are $.02 a square inch as opposed to my normal $.015 a square inch for edge to edge, But totally worth it because they are awesome.

Here is a better view of the back because backs of quilts are awesome! Anyway, this is a great feather for a traditional quilt. I guess it could be modern too....

This one is Fanciful Feather

This one is Scrolling.

Anyway, I have quilting to do. I am making t-shirt quilts now as well as quilting for others and I have been given quite a few orders lately to make quilts. Who knew there was such a desire for t-shirt quilts?

Pictures soon!

Have a Wednesday!

Tia