Retirement Quilt Redo

{Lady of Crafts}

My mom retired last month. For the last 15 years or so she was an Extended Day teacher. Extended Day is what our local school districts call the before and after school care held at the school. At her retirement party they gave her a satin sash with "Lady of Crafts" in glittery letters. And she is the First Lady of Crafts in my book. She has an entire room *filled* with different crafts, craft materials, craft supplies, craft books, etc., etc., etc. Tubs and tubs, shelves and shelves all meticulously organized. Need 500 safety pins? She's got them and won't even feel like they are gone. Need an I-can't-find-it-anywhere color of embroidery floss? She has 3 spools of it and you can have it. She's a crafter and a giver. They do go hand-in-hand.

{Before}

As a retirement gift, her Extended Day family made her a wonderful quilt on which each of the 200 or so kids traced their hand print and wrote their name. Really a great gift. However, it was kind of a last minute idea and her friend didn't have the time (because it needed to be done in 3 days) to make it the way she would have with an appropriate amount of time. (After they gave it to my mom, her friend whispered, "See if your daughter can fix it.")

It may be hard to tell from the photos, but this quilt was about 10' by 3'. Wonderful, but not really practical. My mom and I sat on the floor and picked out the seam around the outside and split the quilt in half. I restitched it together side-by-side resulting in a usable 60" x 60" large lap/perfect picnic quilt.

{After}

The back is blue and yellow square patches. Really cute, but I didn't get a picture of that side.

{Quilted}

I just made some simple quilted grids to keep everything in order. It was pretty fun to transform this quilt to super long and skinny to big and square. =]