Replique Quilt
June 2002
This quilt started out as a photo of the front of my children's school. The tree next to the school isn't nearly this big, but I couldn't ask the children to inscribe tiny little leaves, could I? Each of the leaves has either a child's signature or a message to the teacher.
Here is a close-up of the front door. The windows in the door were done by placing a layer of shimmery lame over a darker grey cotton and satin-stitching them together. The flowers in the flowerbox were embroidered after the appliqué was done.
That's the teacher's name! At our school there are these white signs with the names of the lanes on them that people can buy as a fundraiser and "name the lane". So it seemed obvious to put a sign on the quilt with her name on it!
The leaves were signed by the students using pigma pens. I then sewed them to fusible interfacing and turned them to hide the raw edges; the leaves were then arranged and fused to the quilt and tacked down with a blanket stitch.
The background was quilted with a freehand meandering stitch with invisible thread in the needle and a brown thread in the bobbin to match the background fabric. The result is better than I had hoped for, as this was also my first experience with meandering quilting!
This quilt was awarded First Premium, Champion Rosette at the 2002 Montgomery County Fair in Gaithersburg, Maryland!
Here was my reaction:
And this is what we saw:
The quilt was hanging at the entrance to the Arts & Crafts Building, right at the front desk! You could have knocked me over with a feather. I just couldn't stop smiling!
Here are the ribbons:
As for the prize, I think it's about $14. However, the thrill of seeing my creation hanging up and beribboned was prize enough for me!