Sewing a Real Quilt
A third/fourth grade class hand-sewed a real 72-inch
square nine-patch quilt to raffle off to pay for a field trip.
Each child pieced nine pre-cut squares of cloth,
following directions and modeling demonstrated in class.
The students use free time to complete one or two nine-
patch blocks. The teacher helped them keep stitches
small and straight. The students arranged the blocks in
the order they thought looked good for a five-by-six
block quilt and chose their school colors for the sashing
and backing. The quilter assembled the quilt by machine.
Only two blocks needed adjustment for size-an
outstanding job for any group of people. The quilt went
back to school for the hand tying of knots (a traditional
alternative to stitching for the quilting stage). (photo )
Story Quilt
One of the teacher-advisors on the Museumlink project
created a DBAE approach to a quilt unit (on art quilter
Faith Ringgold, in which fourth graders watched a video
of her work, discussed the elements that made her style
unique, painted a central panel, and designed and colored
a geometric border that was ironed on). We have adapted
this unit to incorporate the use of the WWW. This unit
takes four art classes of 50-60 minutes each. The use of
several class periods let the students absorb the
knowledge about the artist and the art form and reinforce
it in their own work in a way that a one-period activity would not do. (photo )
Resources for Quilting:
https://ariel.ccs.brandeis.edu/~heddi/index.htm#ideas
Quilting with Children gives a teacher illustrated steps and good instructions on making different
kinds of quilts with groups of children. A listserv is also available with this site.