Defy Gravity - Dance Team Quilt

Today I am working on finishing up a quilt that will be a gift for my daughter's Dance Team Coach.  My daughter is one of the captains and she put forth the idea of making a quilt for the coach that each of the girls signs.  I was secretly hoping to make one for her, so I was really glad to have the idea come from the girls!  I prepared 18 squares of white fabric with freezer paper ironed on the back (10 inch squares with a 9 inch square of freezer paper).  We told the girls not to write outside the boundary of the paper and I included pre-tested pens to write with.  The girls did a good job, but some of them wrote right up to the edge of the paper, which makes the blocks very tight for trimming.  So - next time I would give myself a little more margin and make the paper smaller than the finished block!  (I really do believe that you learn something with every quilt!)

Since there were 18 girls and 3 blocks by six blocks is a long skinny quilt I decided to add 2 additional blocks to make a 4 x 5 quilt (which ended up at around 46 x 58 - a pretty nice lap quilt).  I made up a picture collage of some pictures of the girls dancing, plus their "trophy shots" from the last competition.  I printed this up on printable fabric sheets, then made a block that has the year and their theme for this years dance, along with their team name:  Upbeats.  I put these two blocks in the center, with the four senior girls above and below for the center of the quilt, then the rest of the team arranged around that.

This quilt has two layers of poly batting because Debbie is always cold!  It's going to be tied with orange embroidery floss and the girls plan to present it to her Friday Night at dinner.  I'm hoping to be allowed to be there to take pictures, but if not hope someone else will!  This will be such a special gift because the girls wrote such sweet things in their squares.  You can sure tell they love their coach!  I was thrilled to be able to create this for her because I know it will be a tangible reminder of how important she has been to them, and she will always know how much she is appreciated for all her hard work.