Over the last two weeks Joanna and I have been to four of our grandchildren's elementary classrooms to help the kids make a teacher appreciation quilt for their teacher to present at the end of the year. Actually I have a quilt maker, Corinne Covelli, to construct these quilts for me but if you wanted to make a project like this it is pretty easy.
We embroider the child's name on a white quilt block. I cut up pieces of quilt fabrics—lots of different kid-pleasing ones—and go to the classroom. I put the quilt pieces on a table and ask each child to choose about eight pieces. Then he/she goes back and arranges the pieces. Sometimes the child goes back to swap pieces.
After he/she is happy then the pieces are glued down with a washable glue stick. Joanna took the individual photographs of each child. To do this and be sure not to forget which child is which, have the child write her/his name on a piece of paper and make the first picture with the name right underneath the child's face and the second picture without the name. That way you won't get confused when the back information is being prepared. We had another mother to record on a laptop each child's saying, "Why I Love Mrs. __________." One or two sentences will be great. Sample sentences are "She makes math a lot of fun. She is beautiful and wears beautiful clothes. She is nice. She lets us have popcorn sometimes when we read our books. She makes reading easy." Then the child's sentences are photo transferred along with the picture onto a back piece. The quilt blocks that individual children make are on the front with the personalized square on the back of the quilted name piece.
