Quilt mock-up for Artist Residency

Quilt mock-up for Artist Residency, a photo by fifthlampdown on Flickr.

I finished up this sample quilt  today for an interview this morning with the 2nd grade teachers at the school where I will do my artistic residency in sewing and embroidery.

I am really excited about this project, and there is another part to it which I will share next week, since I forgot to take a photo before I brought it to the school, and they kept the prototype.

For this quilt I did something a little unorthodox, I lined it with flannel instead of batting.
This summer when I was teaching a kids' sewing camp at Treadle we were making quilts and as we were using stash fabrics and there was not enough batting in the bins we tried using flannel instead.

It made for a light weight quilt, but he finished product wasn't any less warm than a light-weight batting might have been.
The big bonus for me is that flannel doesn't need to be contained the way cotton batting does, so the quilting can be minimal, if any, and since I am not a very proficient or speedy quilter, nor do I enjoy it at all, this seemed like the perfect technique to use with this little mock-up.
We may go for flannel lining for our finished product as well, since I don't want to quilt over the children's embroidery squares, but if we use cotton batting it usually needs to be quilted fairly densely so it doesn't come apart in the quilt (and I am a fabric snob, and would prefer to use natural fibers at all times).

I began sketching out forest animals and the four above were the most successful thus far.
To fit our theme I thought we could add turtle, loon, otter, bear, deer, and maple leaf and seed.

As an aside, we call maple seeds helicopters, but it turns out that the correct term is samara. Do you think anyone would know what I was talking about if I labeled it maple samara in the quilt block? or should I just go with maple seed?

Happy Thursday to you all, I hope you're enjoying as beautiful day where you are as we are!