Goodbye my friend!

Logan's first grade teacher is going to teach her last day of school on Monday!  Yes you read that right our last day of school is Monday, how weird.  Not important, the point is we decided that this end of year class gift needed to be something special that represented her near 30 years of teaching and at least 10 at this school.  She taught abroad as well.  Truly  an amazing teacher.

One of the moms came up with the idea of a quilt, I took that idea and ran with it using my all time favorite tutorial on the web.  Homemade by Jill has a tutorial to make Custom Silhouette Pillows.  Using this technique I not so sneakily barged into this teachers classroom at a super busy moment...twice and got all the kids profile pictures.  Then I did the prep work and brought it back.  Each of the kids got to pick the border around their pictures as well as paint their own profile.  This is a sample of my "trial" block.

Then another mom took all the blocks home and sewed the quilt together.  As for the back the "idea" mom got all the kids to write their name on a piece of paper and I scanned it in, cut and pasted rearranged and printed it out so it looked like this:

This is done by using fabric and sending it through your ink jet printer.  I bought some expensive stuff for this than later learned if you iron your fabric to freezer paper, than attach it to paper it will work the same and it is a whole lot cheaper!

The "sewing" mom has a sister who quilts and did the quilting for us!  It was fabulous!

Here is the front of the finished project:

On the back is the "signature block," it is the key to whose faces are where on the front.  Then it is surrounded by matching fabric from the front.

Since school ends on a Monday and a few kids wouldn't be there, we presented "the teacher" with her gift.  And a few pictures that show how surprised and pleased she was.  The "Quilter" mom said our goal was to make her cry.  That is how we know it is a great gift.

Let me tell you it was a great gift.  It really was a group effort.  From the parents who donated financially to those who shared their creative talents, and the mom who got the whole thing started in the first place.  I hope it was worth it for all involved.  When I asked "the teacher" what she was going to do after retirement, she said "I am buying me a nice sewing machine and I am going to make stuff for my grand kids."  Because all the parents donated so generously we not only were able to give her this great treasure but a large gift certificate to JoAnn's.  Overall it was a great success!