Thank you Dr E

From a few posts down.... Here is the finished quilt complete with signatures from the kids. I love the Irish Chain pattern for quilting. I also love the scrappy nature of this particular quilt. The fabrics were selected and edited by the kids to reflect what they felt about their experiences in Dr E's classroom. We gathered signatures from as many current and former students as we could. The smudges on the quilt in the picture are the signatures. We used a fabric gel pen for signing and then heat set it before gifting.

The picture above shows one of the corners and part of the scrappy binding. I used the leftover strips of fabric and sections of blocks from the quilt to piece it together. I chose the scrappy binding because I had such wide white borders. The wide white borders were there because I wanted to leave space for the kids to sign it. From what I can tell, many of the traditional Irish Chain quilts would have a stripe of fabric in the border. It would be in the middle, running corner to corner around the edge. I used straight stitching during quilting to mimic that effect and then pulled it back together with the scrappy binding.

You can see the machine quilting in this image. It is very simple straight stitching along the diagonal lines with the additional straight lines around the outside. I used a very thin cotton batting so that it would be easier for the kids to sign. This is supposed to be a wall hanging or a display piece, rather than a cuddle up quilt. I used spray basting and glued the bejeebers out of the layers. Then I did a VERY loose basting stitch around the outside before I started to machine quilt. I used a walking foot and kept everything as smooth as I possibly could as ran it through the machine. There is one spot where I barely avoided a pucker, but fortunately most people will be hard pressed to figure out where it is.

One last shot of the quilt showing the fabrics and the binding and quilting. It was hard to part with this one but I know it is greatly appreciated. Perhaps I'll add some photos from the gifting later.