Quilt Festival: Flower Basket Button Quilt

This afternoon while I was reading some of the blogs in my reader, I found this post about a Quilt Festival online through Handmade by Alissa's Blog. This wonderful event is being hosted by Park City Girl and My. Oh. My. What a wonderful collection of all kinds of quilts are posted there. What is even more wonderful are the stories about the quilts and why each one is special. Trust me, you won't want to miss this event, grab a cup of coffee, and plan to sit a spell, you will be glad you did.

I decided this would be a great opportunity for me to show off one of my favorite quilts....It was hard to choose, because all of my quilts are my favorites...but this one is very unique and it is special to my heart. Hope you enjoy! (Click on any photo to enlarge to see detail)

My children went to Catholic School through 8th grade. It was a small inter city school with around 230 children, give or take a few. The school principal Mrs. Zinno was a very talented Quilter. In fact, some of you may remember me showing you the quilted Christmas ornaments she made. If you would like to take a look back at those, click HERE.

Anyway, Mrs. Zinno came up with a wonderful plan for earning funds for the school by making a quilt each year and having the children participating in the making or design, then having a school wide raffle in the spring. She did this for four years we were at that school. I am happy to say, I won two of the four quilts. Unbelievable I know. I won the first one she ever made and the third one. This one is the third one. I had never been more excited in my life when I won this one, the donation of $40.00 has brought more joy than you can even imagine each time I look at this treasure.

This is a flower basket design, I think. All the pieces were cut out by the principal and sent home to different moms in the school to sew or stitch them together. Brave of her...right? Once that was complete, the squares were sent back to the school. Once they were all collected and returned, it was time for the children to have their hand in the quilt design.

Every student and staff member in the school got to pick a button from the button stash that was contributed by church and families of the school. And let me say this, I did get to take a look at the large box of buttons and I was just amazed at the different ones. Some antique, some vintage, some new, some cute and comical, some rather unique....it was such a wonderful meddling of all types of buttons, just like the people who made up the school community.


Each child got to choose their button, which would be the flowers on the quilt. Then the buttons were placed on a cardboard log with each child's name. I am sure this was not an easy task because the school had PK3-8th grade students. And if any of these kids were like myself...well, I would have had a hard time choosing just one!

Each button was added to the flower boxes as the flowers, then labeled with the child's name and grade, and then the flower stems were embroidered. So cute!

Many different colors were used in the quilt. My favorite happens to be the green and red plaid used as the filler fabric. This was the colors of the girls plaid jumpers. It just adds a nice touch to the quilt as well as fond memories, for me of those cute little plaid jumpers that were worn with little red sweaters. This square, has my daughter Alisha's button, she was in the 3rd grade when this was completed.

Here is a more masculine quilt square that happens to have my son, Jeff's button. Jeff was in the 8th grade that year, his last year at the school. Luckily, the boys did not have to wear any plaid, just blue pants and a white shirt....nothing cute!

It is amazing how each one is different and shows the uniqueness of each and everyone at the school. I love how this turned out. I like looking at the buttons and thinking about each of the children that went to school with my daughter and son. I can usually imagine why the child chose the button they did for this project. They really do reflect the likeliness of each child.

The size of the quilt is a King size, and I had forgotten it came with two matching pillow shams. I love how it fits on my bed, but I don't use it. It does have a hanger sewn in the back for hanging on a wall, I think this was used to display it at the school. I keep it safe in my quilt display box. I don't want to lose any of the delightful buttons. I am so thankful for the brilliant idea Mrs. Zinno had to raise funds for the school and share her talent with the community. Likewise, I am so thankful lady luck was smiling down on me and I was able to win not one but two delightful quilts.

I hope you enjoyed looking at one of my favorite quilts. It holds lots of memories for me and my family. I will pass this quilt on to my daughter one day....far away....one day!

Remember...."Friends are like flowers in the garden of life" just as this quilt clearly points out!

Now, be sure to hop on over to Park City Girl's blog, and enjoy all the wonderful display of quilts participating in the festival. Thanks Park City Girl for hosting this...I am so glad I found it!!