The best laid plans of a quilter....

I have a plan for the 5th grade auction quilt that is probably much more complicated than it should be. But I think it will turn out really awesome. I've compiled this outline for the teachers to see, and also all you blog buddies out there. If you see a fatal flaw, please let me know now!

The auction is February 20th, so I'm hoping to get this done before the 19th.... Here's the little sample I and the kids made last month.

I'm going to alternate Ticker Tape blocks {thanks for sharing Amanda Jean! who else is still in shock, mourning, and denial that she won't be blogging anymore?! Hurray for her, sad for us} with a solid. This sample is linen, but I'm going to use Kona Ash for the big quilt. The finished project should end up about 65" square.

I have 6" squares - marked off to 5x5 - for each child to design. I was going to label them after completion, but worried I would mess up a child's name and then ruin their work. So I have written all their names already. There are 83 of them. I'll bring along some extras in case the roster had a typo or some other disaster befalls a square in the class room. The teachers can also do one, and they will be grouped on a back corner - not enough room on the front.

I have a HUGE pile of gorgeous, graphic fabric. I added Heat-n-bond, peeled it, then whacked the stack up into small squares and rectangles. In the classroom, each child can hunt for favorites, then I'll quickly set their creation with an iron to make sure their design stays.

Once pieced, I'll free motion, raw edge quilt each placed rectangle {nanananana I'm not listening to how insane that may be with 83 billion fabric bits} the solids will probably be stippled.

I decided to pre-cut the fabric bits based on how my test quilt worked....for one, kid school scissors barely cut paper. They weren't going to make nice edges on fabric! Then, when I gave a pile to each kid and said 'fill it up and make something', this was the result:

Caleb the 7th grader literally filled it up and didn't bother to cut much of anything.

Kenton the 5th grader made some crazy tiny bits. I would have needed a padded cell if they all made little bits like that!

Becket was too small to cut with the sharp scissors, so I did cut his pieces. I preferred the clean shapes and loved how he layered a few. He worked for quite a while to get his just right. This was more what I was aiming for. You can see the blocks I made in the corners of the sample at the top.

The total effect is going to be pretty cool. I can't wait to see what the kids make of this!