Our Author Quilt Makes the Local Newspaper

It was a wonderful week. I shared the quilt with our fifth graders who did the project as fourth graders. Hoping to get the quilt hung this week.

http://www.gwinnettdailypost.com/

Staff Photo: Jason Braverman Sydney Watkins, a fifth-grade student at Mulberry Elementary, helps fold a quilt that was made with autographs of famous authors. Mulberry Author Quilt Last year, fourth-grade students wrote to 42 children's authors asking them to sign fabric squares that would be sewn into a quilt. Below are the authors whose autographs appear on the decorative blanket. • Judy Blume ("Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing") • Betsy Byars ("The Summer of the Swans") • Dale Christopher, on behalf of his late father Matt Christopher ("The Kid Who Only Hit Homers") • Beverly Cleary ("Beezus and Ramona") • Christopher Paul Curtis ("Bud, Not Buddy") • Kate DiCamillo ("Because of Winn-Dixie") • Tony DiTerlizzi ("The Spiderwick Chronicles") • Russell Freedman ("Lincoln: A Photobiography") • Dan Gutman ("Jackie & Me") • Nancy Krulik ("Katie Kazoo, Switcheroo") • Lois Lowry ("Number the Stars") • Ann M. Martin ("The Baby-sitters Club") • Christopher Paolini ("Eragon") • Barbara Park ("Junie B. Jones") • Dav Pilkey ("The Adventures of Captain Underpants") • Patricia Polacco ("Thank You, Mr. Falker") • Barbara Robinson ("The Best Christmas Pageant Ever") • Louis Sachar ("Holes") • Roland Smith ("Peak") • Jerry Spinelli ("Maniac Magee") • R.L. Stine ("Goosebumps") • Mo Willems ("Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Tale") • Henry Winkler ("Hank Zipzer")

A Word .... Inspiration Occurs!

 Don't you hate it when you have a project that you HAVE to work on when another project is whispering in your ear, Work on me, Work on me? I have 3 or 4 projects that must be completed by May. One of these projects is the blocks with author signatures that our fourth graders from last year sent to their favorite authors. They are now fifth graders. I want them to see their quilt before they finish the school year in May.  The blocks are six inch squares. We have 23 blocks to include in the project. My first plan was to just make 5 rows of 5 blocks each with sashing and cornerstones between the blocks. Our art teacher is extremely artistic and gifted in design. I spoke to her about illustrating two blocks so I would have 25 blocks that I needed for this arrangement. In our discussion, she mentioned adding more color. Inspiration finally occured! With that one word, color, I knew immediately what to do with this project. At home that evening, I dug through my fabric stash to find more fabric to coordinate with my library border fabric. 

 This cheddar insisted on coming home with me in December from Sweet Home. It is absolutely perfect for the background to arrange the blocks. Even though these aren't t-shirts, I decided to use the arrangement from Sharon's T-shirt pattern. See this past blog entry.  I whittled it down to four fabrics for the sashing around the blocks. I used the black and green that I purchased from Sweet Home for this project plus some red from my Christmas Toile scraps and blue that I found in my stash for the  strips to sew around the blocks. I worked on the blocks this weekend. 

Yesterday, I brought the background piece and the blocks to school. We pushed two library tables together. My art teacher worked her magic on the arrangement of the 

blocks after we were finished with students for the day. The quilt top is ready for me to machine stitch the blocks down. I even have the matching thread for each of the four colors. The project is sitting next to my sewing machine. It is patiently waiting to become a Real quilt top.