A Year-end Gift for my Daughter's Ballet Teacher

Remember I posted a couple of weeks ago that I won the patterns that Carrie from www.believemagic.com was giving away on Giveaway Day? Well, I have just finished my first project from her lovely patterns. I was sitting at my desk trying to think of something to make for my daughter's ballet teacher (who has been outstanding this year!) and I looked down at my desk and saw the lovely patterns sitting there. Slowly an idea began to form in my mind. So here is what I made last night.


I love her! I coloured the fabric of her face and arms with pencil crayons. I gave her a little blush to her cheeks from the exertion of her dancing and dark hair because the ballet teacher has dark hair. The ballerina fabric in the background was some that I got at a church fundraiser sale for $1.00 a metre! I got two metres for $2.00. It's actually called "Dance Class" so it is perfect. She is standing on a wooden dance floor that I made with scraps of binding from another project and quilted a wood grain onto. The border is quilted with little loops that I imagined are what the pirouettes would look like if they showed up on the floor. The little saying "Elle adore danser" is written in French because the teacher's first language is french. The binding is left over Pearl Bracelets from another quilt. Her legs are made with light pink fabric for her ballet tights and I embroidered the satin ballet slippers. I also sewed little pink glass beads on her skirt hem.


This is the backing with a hanging sleeve. Now I am just embroidering a label and it will be all ready for next week's year-end celebration. The ballet school is closing after 21 years so it's a big loss to the dance community of our city but I was so happy my daughter could take her first year of ballet there.


I hope my daughter's ballet teacher will love it and know how much we appreciate her hard work and professionalism. I am already working on registration for the fall in our new town that we are moving to. I am so pleased with how this project turned out. Thank you again to BelieveMagic for the pattern.

Thank you for checking out this post. I am especially proud of this project as it was a new technique for me and I made this in one evening.

My giveaway of Camille Roskelley's new book "Simply Retro" is open until Thursday so make sure you comment on that post for a chance to win.