Before I started my blog I worried that I would not have enough things going on in my life to write posts about. I quickly realized my real problem is finding the time to write about everything going on in my little sewing room let alone my life. I began work on this quilt about a month ago. I’m going to post some of the steps so far. The last day of school is next Friday. 7 days to finish. Eek.

The kids in Leil’s class each created a watercolor self-portrait. The original art was copied on a color copier and then used to decoupage a bench that was auctioned at the PTO fundraiser. They did two different benches. With a class of 26 kids the benches went for $800 each.

As a year end gift to Mr. Eisenhood I decided to take the original art, scan it in, print it on fabric and then create a wall hanging. Several things inspired me to do this. This is Mr. E’s first year of teaching. I’ve never seen a teacher be so kind and respectful to the kids. He has their total attention and adoration. My daughter Leil has really blossomed under his instruction (a big deal for us given last year’s teacher and her experience in the class was not so glowing). It’s something I wanted to create from my heart to commemorate his first year of teaching and also extend a huge thank you for how much he gives of himself to our kids.

I used Printed Treasures pre-treated fabric and an HP Photosmart 7760. I find my colors are too muted on this printer and I’m looking for new ideas (suggestions please). I’ve used BubbleJet Set before but given my time pressures I decided to spend the money on the ready to go stuff (a whopping $17.95 for 5 sheets). I imported the scanned photos into Adobe Elements and resized them so I could get 4 onto a page.

I first placed all of my squares in a grid. It looked way too boring. I wanted a more stimulating look to the configuration. I reached for a book I had purchased awhile ago by Margaret Miller called Smashing Sets. The focus of the book is on layouts for groups of blocks that don’t match but I think it worked really well for what I was trying to do to.

I chose a bright selection of fabrics. I first decided on my background fabric. The multi-colored square pattern laying between the black and lavender polka dots in the photo. I then pulled other fabrics based on colors in that print. As it’s turned out that’s the only fabric I stuck with! I’m still thinking about using the others on the back or binding.

My first step in the construction process was to frame out the portraits. I decided to group some together and leave others as singles. I talked with another quilter who had done a quilt out of this book and she suggested I frame with excess fabric to work with and then square the final framed blocks to an even size. My printed blocks were all a little different in size to begin with (1/8 to 1/4 inch differences). This saved me a HUGE amount of headache. I didn’t understand exactly why until I started designing the framed block layout on grid paper. Having the frames at even 1/2 inch sizes made the graph paper exercise much easier. I’ll show that process in my next post.

I cut my strips to 1 1/4 inch and then made my way around each block log cabin style. I used this method of sewing them all onto the same long strip. I liked it because I didn’t have to precision cut the black to size. I made my ends nice and even to cut after it was sewn and pressed.

My camera lens came back from the factory repair center so I’m back in business. Future photos in my sewing room should be much brighter! Yipppeee! By the way, Canon turned that lens around within a week, pretty darn amazing.