A quilt for a special teacher

My son has an AMAZING preschool teacher! We just love her to bits! I am on the Board of Directors for our little preschool and just felt I wanted to give her something special! So I came up with this little idea. Our classroom theme this year was Owls and what a great way to capture memories in her first year of teaching at our preschool than make a quilt and get the kids involved...
Here we go... 
I traced the kids' hands and then used heat n bond on the back of fat quarters and cut them out, along with little owl bodies I traced and feet etc...

 They became too big for my 12x12 blocks they had to be placed on each block like so... but it worked out good!
This looked a little... blah so I added colored sashing which made it POP!

 And a border that says "A teacher takes a hand opens a mind and touches a heart"
 Then I had each child write their name (some with help) on their owl.

 and here is the finished project!

We all cried a little at the preschool grad when it was presented! Such an amazing teacher deserved a heartfelt gift with a little love from the kids in it!