9 year old artists

Now that I'm home again from a short trip I'm rarin' to go on my WIPs.

My DD is having a fundraiser at the school where she teaches. She had the idea that I would make a quilt. No, it's not like that, I'm joking. The kids in her Grade 3 class would make the squares, and I would put them together. Then we decided to include two other Grade 3 classes. So I came home to 61 squares. Here they are:

The drawings are just amazing! I know I couldn't do so well if someone said to me "draw a penguin" (they love penguins).
We used Sharpies on white squares 6 " finished.

Pros  for the Sharpies:
they fit our budget
they come in a large range of colours
they are indelible

Cons for the Sharpies:
They are indelible, and if you got some on your clothes they would be, but would the colours stay where we put them?

I've done everything I can to set the colours. First a hot iron. Then I bought some Retayne, and following instructions I put some squares in hot water. Horrors. The water was turning light yellow. The first batch shed a little ink, and the outlines of the pictures turned fuzzy, instead of very crisp. This is a lot of stress. Imagine 61 little kids looking disappointed, not to mention their parents. That is a large group.
Finally I got into a groove with warm water, less colour loss, and no dramatic changes. Then I ironed them again. Phew!! Relief! They still look great.

Now I'm sashing them together, here are the first few rows:

The sashing is a sort of jungle print, in keeping with our wildlife theme.

And after that my other WIPs seem a bit tame (pun!), so more about them on another post.

Linking to WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced. I'm going there now to browse the fantastic things everyone is making.

Till next time,

Sue