Signature Quilt (2023-2025)

Sometimes, while browsing The Quilt Index, I see signature quilts, and I love the idea of them.  When I recently went back to college, I decided to make one.  

I started a two year program in 2023, graduating in 2025.  Each year admitted a small cohort who went through all the same classes together, so when I was a first-year student, the class before me were second-years.  When I was a second-year student, the class after me were first-years.  This gave me an opportunity to collect signatures from three classes, or 6 years' worth of students!  

When I graduated, my cohort presented the finished quilt to the program director.  

Method

Using the advice given in this well-researched and tested article [opens a PDF], I bought a bunch of Nano-Liner pens from Royal & Langnickel.  Then I made a whole bunch of blocks with blank white strips in the middle.  I copied a 1930's quilt I saw online, drafting my own measurements and working with scraps.  Knowing that non-quilters might want to write all the way to the edge of fabric, I made sure to surround the white pieces with dark fabric so no-one would write past the white and no words would get lost in seam allowances.  

The hardest part was collecting all the signatures: two people from the class of 2024 took charge of getting their classmates' signatures for me; I got my class' signatures piecemeal; and I got the students from 2026 all at once at their orientation.  After that, assembly was easy, and I sent it to a long-armer for quilting.  The photo above is me squaring off the edges before binding, and the picture below is the label.  

I am happy with the rich colors of this one, and I love the variety of ways people wrote their names.  

When we gave it to our program director, she said the first thing she was going to do when she got home was show it to her mom, who had also been a teacher.  I guess they compare the presents students give them!