Let Down

I've made a lot of blankets but I have given away about 90% of them. I always get so excited to give it to the recipient but then after it goes I always have a let down. I miss it! I miss seeing it around the house. After I finish one I always have it laid out so I can look at it every time I pass it. I always show it to as many people as I can before I give it away (my poor visiting teachers - they've seen so many projects).

And so it went last Thursday when we gave away my NEW favorite. The homeroom moms had collected money for a gift card for MacGregor's teacher, but then a sister of one of MacGregor's classmates died. Mrs. Appleyard had been close to this family and so in Mrs. Appleyard's honor the class donated the gift fund to the grieving family for the foundation where their daughter had gone to summer camp. I don't know for sure but I think this teenage girl died of complications of epilepsy.

MacGregor's teacher had told me that she thought he was pretty special. She has taught many years and said she loves all her students but there are those few that just capture her heart. I wanted to make sure we still did something for this special teacher to let her know that we thought she was great too. Incidentally, MacGregor was scared to death when he found out he had her because she was the "strict" teacher in second grade and quite a bit older than the other teachers in his grade. In the end he loved her and was excited each day to go to school. Can you ask for anything better than that?

I was inspired by the signature quilt that we made for our graduate at church so I came up with my own pattern and decided to make a signature rag quilt for Mrs. Appleyard. I knew I wouldn't have time to quilt it so ragging it was the way to get it done fastest.

First I picked the fabric. I picked 6 coordinating colors. I just love them. They're soft and old fashioned but yet trendy. I sewed each block using two different fabrics on top and bottom and inserted a cream middle. Once all the blocks were done I took them to school. We asked Mrs. Appleyard to leave the room for 10 minutes so she wouldn't know what we were working on and then a homeroom mom helped me get the 25 signatures that I needed. We had 3 extra blocks without signatures so we filled those in with special messages for the teacher
For the 4 corners I just sewed random sized strips from each of the six fabrics together. I quilted a flower in the center of each of these and set them vertically as to contrast the horizonally set name blocks.

In the center I put a picture of the class that I had copied on fabric that goes thru your printer. Then I put a border around this. The only thing that disappointed me was that when I washed the quilt - which I had to do to get the rag effect - the picture did fade quite a bit. I had even bought the more expensive printer sheets and did the whole "color fast treatment". It still looked ok but not as crisp as before I washed it.

Since I used thin cotton for the front I used a middle layer of pink polka dot flannel (to thicken it up and give it more "rag") and bluish gray polka dot flannel for the back. In the bottom corner, we put a letter from MacGregor that he wrote all by himself. We copied it onto one of the printer fabric sheets and sewed to the back.


Isn't that cute? I got in trouble for not correcting his spelling. The day after I sewed it into the quilt he came home from school and asked me why I didn't correct his spelling. I said the letter was from him and I thought it was great just the way it was. He said he had spelled the same word wrong that day in school (probably thought it was right because I didn't correct him the night before) and was told by his teacher that 2nd graders should know how to spell that word. So now he's feeling terrible about giving his teacher this letter with a misspelled word that he should know. Now I feel terrible because he feels bad about his letter. He did give it to her and told her that there were some misspellings and she said, "Well, 2nd graders shouldn't know how to spell everything yet." Now she probably feels terrible for making him feel bad the day before. So we all feel terrible but yet we all feel great because it was an awesome gift. She sent a thank you note home with all the kids on the last day of school saying that she loved it and would always remember them. (I'll try to get a picture of the note and post it on here later).

I'm having my let down because those cute little signatures are no longer laying in piles in my home but I know they will always be cherished and I am happy that I could play a part in that.