My biggest quilt yet! Stage one.....dyeing fabric with Yr6

A few short weeks ago I came up with a great idea to make a quilt with children at our local school to celebrate their Centenary. It would involved every child in the school, a combined rather large school of 420+ children ranging from 3-11years. The Head very kindly agreed that it would be a great idea and after a couple of meetings I came up with a plan. Did I mention that he wanted it in the school Summer carnival, which was only 6 weeks away from the start date? No pressure there then....

I shall keep my blog sketchy with details, I am still in the middle of it all, so actually don't have time to blog much anyway. I'm also planning to write an article for a magazine, so need to keep some surprises for that in the Autumn!

Anyway, lets start: Year 6's helped me clamp, bind and dye the fabrics. These fabrics would be used later by different year groups and also to frame and bind the quilt.

I love to ooh and aaah when fabric appears from the dye baths. I thought the children might not be as excited, but I was wrong. They oohed and aaahed with gusto at the colourful fabrics we had created.

Drying on the line, never had my garden looked so sunny and colourful!

I couldn't stop looking at them.

Their next task, using the letter of their first name, was to design a complex pattern which they then inked onto their squares of fabric.

And then they stitched around their letters. Only 45 in this year group, so progress was made quite quickly in the scheme of things.

 Really lovely work, even the most challenging of child took pride in their letter and did a good job.

These are pictures of lovely designs and very neat stitching. 

Yr 5's and indigo dyeing in the next posting!!

Jane x