The Eyes are the Passageway to the Soul

My 2nd grader's class quilt is all finished and ready to be delivered to his teacher this week. This quilt is so different from the first one of this type that I did 2 years ago. But they are both fun, and I love making such playful quilts.

Back in February, I was asked by his teacher to come spend the afternoon with the class and teach them about quilting. It seemed almost an insurmountable task for 7-8 year olds! They were a fantastic and captivating audience. We talked all about Harriet Tubman and the importance of quilts to the underground railroad. I showed samples of the key patterns used in that day. I showed them several quilts and how they are made. They all listened and wanted more, much to my surprise. I had them make "quilts" out of paper pieces in different colors and fixed shapes. You can already see the left brains versus the rights! And then I had each draw their self portraits using fabric markers. These came back to me a few weeks later. Seriously, double click to get a closer look at all the great faces. I just love how they each see themselves. And the peace-sign craze amongst the girls is terribly amusing!

Thanks ato the help of Michelle aka Calicodaisy, I got some fantastic machine embroidery on the center medallion. She did a great, great job, and it so enhances the finished quilt. I am so (SOOOO!) glad I though to contact her about doing it. Many thanks!! I was confused as how to quilt around (or through it!).
I always get a flood of questions about how I design these type quilts. This one was kind of a "fly by the seat of my pants" task. My self portraits were ALL different sizes. No 8 year old can fill a 6" square. So I took a multitude of my black and white prints to frame each. The B&Ws seemed to be cohesive with all pictures. Then I auditioned the border fabrics. I knew I wanted either blue or red - very primal, youthlike colors. But more important than that, the red made the viewer see their smiles, while the blue made the viewer see their eyes. I liked the effect of looking into their eyes best -- almost as if we could see their souls.

So here are a couple of the closeups. The quilting is also kind of simple and primal. The swirly quilting is in a red-blue-yellow Rainbow thread, and the white echo quilting is imprecise, but yet enough so that it draws you into the faces.
Can you tell that there is a pair of identical (?) twins in his class?! I can't wait for the kids to see themselves. There are 3-4 of them in this class that were in Hayden's kindergarten class when we made one of these quilts. It was a fun experience-