Beauty is in the eye of the beholder...

The downside of being able to sew, crochet, knit or quilt is that your children want you to create gifts for their teachers.  I cannot just pop off to Dunkin Donuts and get them gift certificates.  No,  I have to work my hands and back to the bone.  But I guess since these folks spend more time with my daughters than I get to, they deserve it!

So my daughters decide that I have to make their teachers a quilt.  Oh DEAR!!!!!  I compromised with them by saying I would make a baby-sized quilt as a wall hanging.  Cause the last day of school is June 18th!!!  Luckily, they agreed.

I emailed the teachers to play off each other asking what they liked.  Did they like cats, dogs, coffee, beaches, gardening.....anything that I could use as a theme or color pattern for the quilts.  I got answers back and scoured the Internet looking for fat quarters that matched the themes.

Both teachers like coffee.  Go figure.  It is Rhode Island and we have a Dunkin Donuts on every corner.  We created coffee syrup flavoring.  We eat coffee ice cream.  But finding coffee fat quarters was driving me batty.  There is an AWESOME fabric collection coming out in August.  But that does me jack-diddly right now.

So last night, we jumped over to Joann's to see what fat quarter bundles they had.  Not much.  Sigh. 

But Amanda grabbed a bundle of fat quarters and INSISTED that Mrs Elizabeth, her one-to-one aide, NEEDED this fabric.  It was bright.  It was metallic birds in jewel colors.  I needed 6 and it only had 5, so Amanda picked a random yellow to go with it.  I wheedled.  I showed other suggestions.  One other pretty one she said would be for Mrs Murphy, but Mrs Elizabeth NEEDED this.  So it came home with us.

Amanda has Autism.  She gets fixated on certain things.  One of the things she is insistent on is STYLE.  She has a very defined sense of style for a 6 yr old. Mrs Elizabeth has helped make the last half of Amanda's school year so successful.  We were so worried that she would not be able to make the year in an integrated setting and Mrs Elizabeth certainly helped make it happen.  Without the support and effort of Mrs Murphy and Mrs Elizabeth,  Amanda would have had a much worse year.  And we want to show our gratitude.

I posted on Facebook asking for opinions:

What do you do when the fabric and colors that your daughter picked for her teacher's gift are hideous? Amanda picked this for her Aide. The fabric bundle is birds and I needed one more so she picked this yellow. It is a wall quilt. Do you get it? Or tell her it was not right?

People basically said to go with what Amanda wanted.  So I sat down and started cutting, sewing, ironing and cutting again last night.  And by 11pm, I had all 20 squares assembled.  Took a picture, posted the update to Facebook and took my tired and achy self to bed.

WOW!  Bright!!!

 I showed little Ms Priss my hard work this morning and she wanted to bring it to school.  Sorry kiddo, mommy still has to sew all the squares together, sew the rows, add borders and backing and hand tie this bad boy!

So after the girls got on the bus, I sewed the squares into rows and sewed the rows together.

In all its glory

Put on your sunglasses!

So the little diva was correct.  It does look good together.  I just hope Mrs Elizabeth realizes that Amanda loved her so much that she had to have this fabric for her.

Would your child's teacher or aide have appreciated this?  Would you?