New Handprint Quilt Done!

Handprint Quilt

I'm thrilled that this quilt went together so smoothly and quickly.  Sunday was a big sewing day and I also spent Monday afternoon.  Tuesday I took off and got a lot done with few interruptions.  I spent time planning of course and two shopping trips for fabric.  Tuesday evening and Wednesday were when I hand sewed the binding.

I ended up using almost all the fabric I got, so the amounts were pretty close to what I needed.

• I had 6 accent prints (3 pinks & 3 blues) - 5/8 yd of each
• The multicolor off white I had over 3 yards.  Probably 2.5 yards would have worked.  That was used for the front, the back, and the binding.
• For the handprints, I used Kona ivory and had 2 yards.  That was perfect for 19 students with one mistake.  

I used a twin sized packaged batting and quilting thread.

The quilt size is about 48" x 60".

Back of quilt

New Handprint Quilt continued

I received the new handprints and got all of the top layer stitched together yesterday.






The next step is to make a quilt sandwich. The first layer down is the back, then the batting, and finally the top. With another mom's help we got the quilt sandwich pinned together quickly.









I planned to use my big quilting sewing machine to do free motion quilting. I often need to re-familiarize myself with it as I don't use it regularly. After changing the needle and cleaning and oiling the bobbin compartment, it was ready to go. Fortunately, the machine worked great!  Here's a little video of me doing the free motion quilting. It's like doodling on fabric.

Here's a close up of one of the hand prints quilted. As I worked, I read each name and and was thinking of each child and also of course of their teacher.








After quilting the layers together, I sewed on the binding.  I used a narrower 2.25" binding.













The final step is to hand sew the other side of the binding to the back side of the quilt.  It's almost done!

A New Handprint Quilt

I am excited to be working on another special project for my daughter's teacher. Many parents came together wanting to do something for her and I offered to make a quilt like I had for another teacher who was retiring.

Step one was to get painted hand prints from the children. Fortunately two moms were able to do that before the weekend. I purchased coordinating fabric and today got to work putting it all together. Two students were missing on Friday, so we will hope to catch them on Monday.

I cut apart the handprints into 8.5" squares and cut strips of the coordinating fabric into 8.5" x 4.5" strips and 12.5" x 4.5" strips.

Next I laid out the handprint blocks and the coordinating strips.

Then I  pieced together the back of the quilt.

More progress is shown in the next blog post.

The completed quilt blog post.