I did a school wide quilt project with my middle school last year for a
Sept. 11 memorial. Each home room class designed a square- I put
together packets of material with the background piece and a variety of
fabric pieces with the colors we chose. The finished squares were given
back to me and a couple of parents and I assembled the quilts. We ended
up with 3 really large quilts. Everyone loved it.
Then in February, we made a quilt/wall hanging that was all hearts and
hands. We used the quote about art combining work with hands, your head
and your heart. I can't remember the wording right now.We looked at Jim
Dine's hearts and Bunki's student's hearts. I bought white cotton, gave
each kid 2 5 inch squares and each student cut a heart or hand shape
out of one square. We painted the background square and the heart or
hand with watered down acrylics, and sewed the shape onto the square
with a running stitch. I didn't worry about finished edges, since it was
going to be more of a fabric painting than a usable quilt. I taught them
some basic embroidery stitches and they embroidered their squares as
much as they wanted to. Some just embroidered around their appliqued
shape, some did much more. I pieced the squares together to make the
hanging. Just like everyone says about sewing and weaving projects- my
tough middle school boys liked it as much or more than the girls. It is
still on a wall outside my room and students are still pointing out
their square to friends as they pass by.
When I taught high school crafts one year, we made spring banners- each
student had a strip about 8" wide and 36" long and had to design
something that represented spring to them- we did a lot of different
techniques and they chose what to do thier design with- some fabric
painting, some applique, embroidery, quilting, etc. The strips were
pieced horizontally to make banners we hung outside the art rooms- that
was a success too-
I definitely don't think it is too elementary.
Heather
Karalee Serra wrote:
>Has anyone ever done a quilt project with their students? I was thinking it
>might be fun to have the students come up with a theme, work on a square,
>and design the final layout of the quilt. Maybe give it back to the
>community in some special way. Is this too elementary for 7th graders? Any
>ideas?
>
>Thank you
>Karalee
>http://www.cutxpaste.net >
>
>---
>
