The $1700 Quilt

This is the school auction quilt that my dear friend Alissa and I made.  It came out way way way better than either of us could have imagined.  And while we thought we were being a little selfish in hoping to bring in around $700-$1000, the final bid of $1700 literally had us both in tears.  I had never been to an auction - they really are exciting.  You cannot help but get into it!  And just listening to the price go up and up and up was so flipping awesome!

Everything to make this quilt came from my stash.  The background, backing and binding are all Denyse Schmidt County Fair home dec weight.  The trunk of the tree is actually the reverse of a really ugly batik.  A few of the hands are batiks, but most are different Kona greens, with a Shot Cotton thrown in for good  measure.

All of the kids at school had their hand traced by Alissa onto the lighter weight Heat N Bond.  We then ironed random hands onto the green fabrics and Alissa stamped each child's full name onto their hand.  It was a heat set fabric stamp pad (Versacraft?).   I stamped two of the hands and was very glad to leave this job up to Alissa.  She also cut out all the hands.   Just not my cup of tea........Thanks Alissa!!

After the trunk was ironed down, I sewed crazy all over it to secure it and to make it look more like a tree trunk.  I tried to throw some knots in there.  Then we started placing hands all over and ironing them down.  We then zigzagged around every single hand.  Yes, we zigzagged. around. every. single. hand................................

Used a bit of twill tape sewn down for the ropes on the swing.  The two birdies on the swing are the director and assistant director of our daycare co-op.  We asked for their favorite colors and then stamped their names on to their bird.

After we sandwiched the quilt, I free motion quilted the empty spaces of the branches.  I was very worried about making the quilt too stiff -with all the fusible stuff already in there.  For the background, I just sort of echo-quilted the trunk shape.  The name of our school.......The Oaks.  I mean for real - could we have really done anything other than a tree?

Glad we were able to get the year in there somehow :)

Alissa and I also stamped our initials onto the trunk of the tree, sort of like we had carved them in.

You can barely see them in the pic below, sort of red on the brown.  There is a heart in front of our initials also.

So that is our auction quilt!  We were insanely proud of what we made and have no idea how we are ever going to top this one next year......