Each year when my kids were in elementary school, their teachers were the recipients of a quilt.

The design for the quilt generally came from an idea that they had, and we converted into a quilt.

One year, quilting daughter, Stephanie found this Thank You card and decided that it would be the perfect design for her teacher -- although more for her teacher's daughter who was a relative newborn during Stephanie's fourth grade year. The pattern was created by projecting the image from the card onto a large piece of paper on the wall. Once the shapes were outlined, I cut out the full size patterns and cut each piece of fabric using the pattern. This was before freezer paper became a resource for appliqué.

Most of these fabrics were hand dyed, although the flowers were cut from some tropical fabrics where the flowers were the perfect size. The toucan's beak is a tie-dye fabric that Stephanie dyed for the quilt. All of these pieces were hand appliquéd and layered. The pieces were layered working from the background to the foreground of the quilt. For example, the first two sections to sew together were the sky and the green grass. Once those were complete, the giraffe was added, followed by the toucan, the flower in front of the toucan, then the grass and the lion, etc. Although it may look complicated, if you take it one step (layer) at a time, it is easy to follow. The seam allowances on the "back" piece that are covered up, lay flat, and the foreground piece is overlayed. That was an interesting technique that took a few quilts for me to figure out. I was trying to but the seam allowances up against each other. How much extra, needless work was that? And how I wish I had someone to guide me then! The hand quilting follows the lines of the animals and creates some texture in the bushes and sky. The smile on the lion and the wings on the birds were embroidered on.

This was a very fun quilt to make, even though it took hours and hours to get the pieces ready and sew them onto the background.

Using some more current techniques for appliqué, I am certain it would have been easier, and my curves would have been smoother and the inside corners would have been more pointed - without worrying about fraying fabric.

Happy Quilting!

Penny Halgren

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