The Quilts

We are coming to the end of elementary school for Kelly and her friends. This is a big transition. And for the most part, they're handling it well.

I was at Open House last week, and the class mom from Kelly's room approached me. She's just an amazing woman. She's a doctor, and has four kids, and basically runs her house with grace and peacefulness in a way that I really admire. I don't know how she keeps everything going as smoothly as she does. Anyways, she came up to me and started talking about the 'end of year' gift to the teachers from the class. She had ideas, and several things were well under way. And then she said "But I wonder if we shouldn't do something more baby-focused, seeing as both fifth grade teachers are having babies this year..."

WHAT?

I am SO out of the loop.

OK, so it's sort of not surprising that I wouldn't know that Kelly's teacher, a man, would be expecting.

But how did I miss that the willowy female teacher who teaches the other half of 5th grade was sporting a baby bump?

So the Class Mom was going on about perhaps getting a diaper bag and having the kids sign it, when I found myself blurting out "Oh, wouldn't baby quilts be more fun?"

And before I knew it, I was blabbering on about what a great project it would be, so easy, I had all the supplies, so it would be nearly free! I was designing quilts in my head, and talking about fabric, and what the kids could do to be involved, and how we could do it on the sly so that the teachers wouldn't know, and WOULD SOMEONE PLEASE STOP ME????

To her credit, Christine (the class mom) said "I would NEVER suggest that you do somehting on such a big scale!" and I poo-poohed her, saying "You do so much! Certainly I could do this to help you out!"

And before she could change her mind, I was off and running.

I found all the solid flannel fabric in my stand-beside closet. I knew I'd bought it on sale a few years ago. So that's basically free. And then the next afternoon, I took Kelly and her friend Alice out to Joann's, and had them help me out with picking a few more fabrics that are a bit more hip and up-to-date.

I got these great brown flannels. I know it sounds dull and gross... but they're hip! One is a faded brown with turquoise designs, and the other is the same faded soft flannel brown with pink, green, and blue pin dots. I love them!

I'm off to school right now to have the kids sign white flannel squares with fabric markers, and then I'm going to bang out these quilts in the next few days.

I don't feel put-upon at all, doing this. I almost feel energized, which is a good thing, seeing as I slept 14 hours last night.

And I still need to finish off where the cliff-hanger left you.

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I kind of feel like I need to put a photo in the entry, but I don't have any fabric photos.

Here's a shot inside the "Bee Tree" that I walk by on the way to the pond. To get this, I was holding my camera above my head, at arm's length, and hoping somehting was in focus. And that 105mm macro lens that I was borrowing was HEAVY! The lens weighs over a pound and a half! I got my work out, that's for sure.