The Patchwork Path: A Quilt Map to Freedom

I use Davis Digital curriculum in my art room, and whenever textiles come up, I am frantically looking for unique ideas online. I don't have a "crafty" bone in my body. I was a painter and printmaker back in "ye olde college days".  We discussed textiles in "ye olde Art History class", but I never touched undertaking textile work (except for the major hemming failure back in '81 when even the neighbors heard my mom's frustration with my ineptness on a sewing machine). Textiles are beautiful works of art, but I have to beg, borrow, and steal to find hands -on textile work for my students to practice.

I like to use literature when I teach and when I ran into this Dick Blick Story Quilt Youtube video, I could instantly see how this could be done using textiles and stories. 

I actually went out and bought the materials myself(yikes, I know you can't all do that, but I only have a few kids in my fifth grade class). Next year, I will purchase the materials through my school as this is one of the lessons I will definitely be repeating. The results were beautiful, each child was able to tell a personal story, and I met the standards of teaching about textiles. Voila!

I first read my fifth grade class The Patchwork Path, by Betty Stroud. I never knew that quilt symbols were used as maps to help slaves follow the Underground Railroad - neither did my students. They loved the story.

We then discussed symbols and looked at quilts on my handy dandy Pinterest board.  I pointed out how SIMPLE symbols are..usually without much detail. My kids LOVE details.

The students got out their sketchbooks and began sketching out symbols that could tell a story about their own lives. We later had a demonstration on using the water soluble wax pastels (with water and without), and how to use patterns, repeat colors, and use further symbols in the framing of the quilt piece. 

The students loved the vibrant color, the ease of using these fabric pastels, and the choices they could make on subject matter.

We displayed the quilts on black paper, but it looked kind of lame, so next year, I will be putting a few stitches in each quilt piece and put it on a black fabric to hang.

I thought I had ended on a beautiful note with my textile curriculum objectives until I glanced at the next Kindergarten lesson..EEEEK! The running stitch! Visions of hems crowded my rational thinking until I remembered, “He knew enough of the world to know that there is nothing in it better than the faithful service of the heart.” ― Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

I can learn anything for those cuties in my Kindergarten class. They pay in smiles.