A couple of weeks ago, I subbed for a second grade teacher on a Monday. They were just starting a new reading passage that week and it was titled "A Quilt Story". The story was about a little girl who felt more at home in a new place because she had her beloved quilt with her. Anyway...several kids in the class had no idea what the difference between a blanket and a quilt is.
I talked to the teacher and told her I would be glad to bring in a few quilts and do a little presentation for the kids. She was so excited!
When I came in, I started off by asking them if they knew what scraps were - and got a great explanation! I went on to show them scraps, some batting, and some orphan blocks. I had them guess the name of a few blocks - a log cabin block, flying geese, and a spiderweb block. I explained how I would take blocks and piece them into a quilt top.
At this point I showed them my scrappy trips top and asked them to guess how many little squares were in this top. They were all very surprised when I finally gave them the correct answer of 900!
I showed them several different quilts and got lots of oohs and aahs. They asked great questions like how long it takes to make a quilt. I showed them a picture of my featherweight and of my long arm machine. They thought it was funny that my sewing machine is almost twenty years older than me - and they think I am old.
I did three presentations last week and did my last one this morning. It has been a lot of fun sharing my quilts with these kids. One little girl has repeatedly come up to me and asked me to please teach her to sew!
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When my youngest was about 6 I was approached by her class teacher who had just started to learn patchwork and quilting and she needed some help and tips from someone slightly more experienced - as is so often the case with the common ground of quilting we have become firm friends and because the children were studying pattern she encouraged me to bring a selection of quilts in to show the kids and I had a wonderful morning sharing them, reading a quilt based story and handing out colouring sheets with quilty pictures for them to colour in - as a result of this we worked on a joint project helping the children make a quilt to donate to Project Linus. The children were given a pale blue fabric square to either write their name or draw a picture of themselves in fabric pens. Then the chidren joined these blue squares with scrappy squares to make 4patches. I then alternated them with a fun dark blue fabric with beachballs on, added a border, quilted it up and finished the quilt. None of the children were older than 7 but I was quite surprised at how competent some of them were and it was such a fun project to be part of - I so wish I had taken a photo at the time
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