And not just any quilt but one that the kids could participate in. A couple years ago I saw this quilt at Vivian Love's blog, Quilts With Love. This lovely woman quilted Piece, Love, Twilight, the quilt we made for Stephanie Meyer, and her quilting blows my mind. I dream of going down to take a class from her down in Southern California someday. (too bad I didn't discover her sooner when I lived a few hours from her rather than now that I'm half the state away) After drooling
over the gorgeous quilting, I thought what a great teacher's gift. 
A few months later I saw the quilting book they must have gotten the idea from, Calendar Kids: Handprint Quilts Through The Year. So of course I bought it. I've been scheming to make a few wall quilts with my girls from the ideas in this book and had even gone so far to buy fabric paints and markers. But for this class project I needed to fit 30 kids prints, and I did not want to make a huge quilt. Nothing like that gorgeous quilt Vivian worked on. I was not that ambitious. Especially since I got this even better idea - make 2 and use one as the Door Decoration for Teacher Appreciation Week!
Then I thought of the perfect solution. We've had the book Ed Emberley's Complete Funprint Drawing Book since Pixie was a wee one and I could make some cute critters with kids fingerprints mixed in with some of the handprints. Cute buggies and flowers are Pixie's obsessions after all!
Three weeks ago I, along with two volunteering mommies, including my neighbor Jessica from Crushed Crackers, spent a couple hours with the kids getting their prints. On two sets of (6) 15" x 15" blocks of muslin. Jamie, the other mommy, had a great idea to take each kid's thumbprint and decorate to look like themselves. Like a "class photo". I LOVE that idea, but by the time she said it we'd done a third of the class. But next year.....
I kept the quilt simple (the one for the teacher I just did; it's twin will be done when they need it for the auction now scheduled in May). Pixie and Jessica's daughter, I will nickname her HoneyBee (she's in Pixie's class btw) "cutied" up the fingerprints. They loved that! I added simple 2" sashing that I stitched in the ditch. Then I added ribbons on some of the flowers and the apple trees - hey there ARE apples after all, they just happen to be pink because I didn't have red the first day I got the prints. And I quilted the accents. One thing I'm not happy with is that I used regular weight thread. In the Calendar Kids book they hand stitched the accents. But time was an issue for me so I did it by machine. I think when I do the 2nd one I will use embroidery thread instead!
Here are the blocks hanging on my design wall before they've been "critterized" (one set with purple masking tape, one with green which I did to keep the edges from fraying, and keep the kids from using up the seam allowance):
Here it is all finished. I just sewed a couple of ribbons into loops because I was hanging them on a couple of Command Hooks so they could be removed after. Btw, I LOVE those hooks. Been using Command products for years. Really recommend them! Anyway, when the week is done I'll take the quilt home and put a hanging sleeve on it so she can hang at home properly:
Closeups! I took these at 7am, didn't do a great job. Maybe when I get it back I'll take better shots:
And here is the finished quilt hanging up where it was designed to go, on the Rm 14 door:
