This quilt was an experiment in letting the students do the majority of the work. After drawing their images and choosing fabric, the class then traced and cut out their images. When the class time was finished, I walked home with a stack of 28 5 1/2" quilt blocks that only needed to be top stitched and sewn together.
Overall, I was quite pleased with the finished project, but there was a learning curve and a bit of letting go at the end. As could be predicted, not everyone followed directions. One student decided to create her own background square (instead of using a pre-cut square), and neglected to add a seam allowance, which made assembling the quilt a bit more challenging. Still, most of the students understood what to do and did it. They made some great art.
The other challenge in assembling the quilt top was distortion. The students were much rougher with their fabric than I'd anticipated (lots of tugging and purposeful unravelling of edges), so the finished blocks were no longer square. I tried to compensate for this when I added the black borders, but in the end I just had to let go of my own desire for square blocks and matched seams. My auction project mantra of "This is not my project, it is the student's project" resurfaced repeatedly. To solve this issue on a future quilt, I would leave a 1/2" seam allowance, instead of a 1/4", so I could trim the blocks back to square before sewing them together.