Neexxttt....

This one is for a teaching co-worker who retired. It was a big project to take on at the time and those of us involved thought we had an extra year, but she decided to retire a year earlier than planned. What?!?!
It has taken a long time to get the blocks from her friends and family. As a result, I kept pushing other projects (for other people) in front of it. Now we have all the blocks and the top is pieced. Some blocks are pieced, some appliqued, some made with fabric markers and/or paint, some are embroidered by machine, some embroidered by hand, some have special elements like sequins or beads or trapunto-like stuffing, some printed on special fabric for ink jet printers. The blocks that are printed on fabric (Colorfast fabric sheets for ink jet printers) are stiff and any stitching holes remain - so no mistakes!
I had decided simple quilting in just the sashing and borders would be best so that the blocks would stand on their own and the special elements would not be disturbed.
I was going to machine quilt it on the frame - easy, fast. HA.
I had not gone far when I realized that would not work - or at least not look well when finished. The stiffer blocks were bunching up and there was going to be puckering on the back.
Off the frame it came, stitching removed and it is now on my floor frame and I am hand quilting in the ditch around each block and will quilt around some elements in each individual block.

I have quilted around Curious George's kite, the heart in the block above George, and a line in the music in the block above that. I am also quilting an X in the corner stones.

 This is my block. It represents her love of children and country. At some point in her day her class sang songs, often patriotic ones.

This is the center panel before it was completed. She often said "Kindergarten is, you know, the garden where the kinder grow". The flowers at the bottom are thumb prints of the students who were in kindergarten her final year. The sun and clouds are thumb prints of students she taught in 1st, 2nd and 3rd grade her final year.

I think she will love it, but I need to go work on it and get it finished.