Back to School Mini Quilt

I love schoolish things!  And that makes sense as I’ve been a teacher for 34 years now!!  I have a Snoopy “Back to School” flag that I put out front the night before I go back to school each fall for the last 18 years or so. 

It is quite faded, but I love it anyway!!

I also have a fun little mini flag out front that says it all for me regarding education!

And I have this fun flag that goes out on my deck!  I love Peanuts, especially Snoopy!!

I’ll be putting them all out on Sunday night as Monday starts the new school year for us teachers here in Fairfax county…sigh!

Where did summer go?  :-(

So, I’ll also be taking down and putting away all my summer decor stuff and putting out some other school decorations inside this weekend.  Yogi and I decided we needed a mini quilt for my metal stand to go with the whole school theme.  Yogi is very decisive, you know!!  :-)

So, I sketched out an old fashioned school house then selected some fabrics from my stash to use.

Notice how Yogi is actively helping me audition the various fabrics…

I traced each part of the design on the paper side of the fusible,

then pressed it onto the wrong side of each fabric.

Then I cut out each piece.

I scored the paper on the back with a straight pin and peeled the paper off.

The mini quilt has to be 12” square finished, so I used a school stripe I’ve had for years for the 2 1/2” wide border and made a viewing template in order to preview and then fussy cut four cornerstones for the border.

I need an 8 1/2” square for the center and so I pieced this square with a blue for the sky and green for the grass.  After the background is finished, I pressed the fused pieces of the school, roof, steps, door, bell, sun, flag and bushes onto the background.

I used black thread and a straight stitch to stitch around each piece. 

I used a light blue thread to then quilt the sky and a green thread to quilt the grass and a red, white and blue variegated thread to quilt the borders and cornerstones.

I added black rickrack on the seam lines of the borders and cornerstones.  I trimmed the extra batting and backing away.

I used a solid black fabric for the binding.

I hand stitched the binding down on the back and TaaaDaaa!!  All done!  :-)

Don’t forget a label on the back!!  Oh, and I hate putting hanging sleeves on these little quilts, so I hang it using 4 quilting safety pins!! 

So, what are you working on today??