Collage of the heART

This is a post I didn't really want to write about - but I want to document this quilt, and tell a bit about the very special person I made it for.

Bruce Greene was THE art teacher in my school.  His wife Susan taught elementary school art, and Bruce taught Junior High and High School.  We are talking small school here - graduating classes of approx 55, and K-12 all in one interconnected building.... often riding the same school busses to and from school.

Everyone had the Greenes as teachers - even if you didn't study art in High School (like I didn't), you at least had 2 years with Mr. Greene in Junior High.

And he was good! He was one of those teachers that left a strong impression in his students.

Unfortunately - I learned about a month ago that Mr. Greene was very ill and not expected to live much longer.  3 months, I was told.

My immediate response?  Make a quilt.  My next thought? Make a quilt and ask my siblings to contribute their own thoughts and blocks to it.  Then I got this crazy idea to jump on Facebook and ask all my classmates, my school mates, Mr. Greene's former colleagues, friends - anyone who wanted.

Send me your blocks.  Send me your names.  Send me whatever you want - and I will be sure it gets into this quilt.  Just send it FAST!!!

And they responded.  The depth of emotion, the creativity, the trust they put in me to put together their words into a tribute to a beloved teacher... it was a surreal couple of weeks as I put this together.

I mailed it out on Monday, June 23rd and it arrived on the 24th.
12 days later I received the news that Mr. Greene had died.

But he spent some time wrapped in our "Collage of the heART" - wrapped in gratitude, admiration, and love.

Thank you, Bruce and Susan Greene - you planted the seeds of my art, gave me roots - and then gave me wings to fly.

Soar high!

Dick and Jane and Hexagons - oh my

I have been having more fun with the Dick and Jane fabrics, and the Jaybird Quilts Hex-N-More ruler.  After finishing the baby quilt last week, I had some bits and pieces left over.  I had intended to make a quilt for the faculty/staff appreciation luncheon at my son's school, and as they had learned about hexagons in 2nd grade this year, I thought the shape was a fitting one to use.  The Hex-N-More ruler made it easy for me to cut my scraps into half hexagons for quick assembly, and I added some shirting and a wide panel of the Dick and Jane word print fabric to make this a nice throw size.

For the backing, again I chose to not cut one of the fabric panels, and brought it out to the width I needed with some more of the Dick and Jane text.  A soft yellow star that was included in all 3 Dick and Jane quilts formed the rest of the backing -and with this project I pretty much used up the last of it.

Quilting this was fun.  Jill had brought a selection of different threads with her for me to try, and had a great golden yellow/orange variegated that worked nicely - not overpowering the fabrics but popping nicely to show some quilting detail.  I did some moderately heavy straight lines through the shirting and word panel, then followed the hexagons in a great zig zaggy pattern that shows up nicely on the back and adds some nice dimension to the whole project.

I finished the whole thing with a dark indigo blue/white binding.  I just love the vibrant colors on this.  It will be a door prize at the event - so it could go to anyone at the Munchkin's school.  Last year's quilt was won by someone who works in the cafeteria.  It is a great way to thank ALL the staff that make the school run so smoothly.

 

"Sandy-Day"

The Munchkin's school was closed on October 30 as we anticipated damage and power outages from Sandy. Fortunately for us, the impact was minimal and no where near the devastation in other parts of NY, but school remined closed nonetheless. So we enjoyed some "home school" on our "Sandy-Day"

Wii Sports Resort filled in for PE and we did some bowling, some table tennis, and even some sky diving.

Perler Beads were our art class.

Our shadow box from last winter was "free-composition" class.

and making a mug rug for the Munchkin's teacher was math class... doubled.

They are learning about arrays -so he picked a 3x3 array.
They are learning about measuring - so he helped me measure each step.

Front

Back (thanks for the scraps, Aunt Sue)

It was a learning filled day - which started with a science lesson on optics.

 If you look really really closely - you will notice that this is a DOUBLE rainbow!!!