On Friday, I sewed the final white border on the Dr. Seuss quilt I’m making as a donation for my daughter’s preschool fundraiser. I am actually growing to really like this quilt, and now that it’s together, I’m almost sad to see it go. I just keep hoping that whoever wins the quilt will cherish it and know how much love and work has gone into making it.

I was able to get the quilt to stay up on the shed just long enough to take one photo before it blew to the ground.

Have I mentioned how ready for spring I am!? I am SO looking forward to bright light and green things, not to mention flowers!

The diagonal sashing, while time consuming, was not nearly as tricky as I imagined it could be. This is definitely a versatile pattern that would be a great way to showcase your favorite fabrics. You could go monochromatic, rainbow gradient, or even a scrappy arrangement like I did with these diamonds.

For the sake of time, I opted to trim the edges and add wide sashing to give it a little extra size. I know that cutting white diamonds would have allowed for all of the diamonds to be whole, but I just didn’t have the time. This quilt must be finished by this Thursday at the latest, and my sewing time is scant. While nursing my sick kiddo over the weekend, I was doubly glad I opted for the short-cut.

I like the boundary that the trimmed edges provide, too. It certainly makes it look more traditional, but I think the quilting I have planned will work well with it. I plan to free motion quilt the entire quilt, using a simple orange-peel-esque quilting pattern in each diamond, a dense triangle-rich quilting in all of the narrow sashes, and a wide rounded loop in the outside borders. I toyed with the idea of free motion quilting random excerpts from Dr. Seuss books, intertwined with Truffula trees and Seussical characters for the outside border, but both because of my time constraints and the end goal, I’m going with simple. At least, as simple as I’m capable.

My daughter immediately spotted the one spot where the diamonds “match” across the sashing, and said how much she loves the quilt. My son pointed out characters and said, “We have that book!” again and again. I’m hoping that the recipient of this quilt loves it even half as much as my kids do.

Have you ever donated a quilt to be raffled off in a fundraiser? I’d love to hear some insight, since I’m feeling torn about donating such a time-consuming creation of love to be raffled off with $2 raffle tickets. Initially, I thought that by adding a quilt to the preschool basket, it would warrant auctioning, like the other classroom fundraiser baskets. Ultimately, the PTO decided to still raffle off the preschool basket even with a quilt added, saying that they wanted the “wonderful contributions” to be accessible to all families in the school. I can’t argue with that. My husband even mentioned it over the weekend, though, asking why I said yes to this endeavor and hoping that I felt my time and efforts would be appropriately valued. Honestly, I am trying to look at it as a pure donation and an old work in progress out of the house, since when I think about the likelihood of the quilt being valued as little as a $20 blanket from Target, I feel a bit icky. If nothing more, this is a learning experience. Like I said, all I can do is hope that by being part of a raffle basket, a child who may not have any other special quilts or opportunities to be given one will win this love-filled quilt and will cherish it.

I’m linking up with  Monday Makers, Design Wall, and Making Monday. Next up is to finish the quilting, which I started over the weekend before my daughter fell ill, and finally binding!