Quilting+in+the+Classroom

Paint program--online, for quilt design []

Math Connection to Quilting http://www.learner.org/teacherslab/math/geometry/index.html

Scroll down for information and resources from Marty.

A quilting project can be a powerful activity in the classroom. Not only are there many social studies connections but creating a quilt requires a lot of math. And quilts can be a part of community services projects, as they were for our shelter project.

Here are a couple of quilting projects we have done at Capital (and below that information about how we did them). This quilt was made at Beck Urban Academy in 2005, as a part of a project on Appalachian Culture (see Appalachian Culture for more information). The design was based on the idea of friendship quilts. Each student was given a square of muslin and students painted their squares based on representing themselves. Groups of four muslin squares were alternated with squares of fabric in order to create the whole.



These quilts were made as part of our Domestic Violence Shelter Project.

For the Beck quilt, we developed the idea of the design, which worked better than we thought it would. Mr. Schack, the teacher, took this quilt to a quilt workshop and the teacher said some really nice things about it.

As we did the shelter project, we looked around at images for a quilt we might want to make. The students found an example of this single Ohio Star quilt with the heart in the center online. We used graph paper to create patterns for each size of quilt, since we made a crib quilt, a twin quilt (top bunk), and a full-sized quilt (bottom bunk). We used applique techniques because applique would make the quilts simpler to create (and we didn't have time for the complexity of piecing a quilt). We recommend the procedure of creating your own patterns because of the learning that takes place in that process.

Social studies: quilt patterns and their meaning, forms of quilting in different cultures, the cultures that quilt, history of quilting Math: creating patterns for specific quilt sizes, measuring fabric, laying out pieces to make sure they are symmetrical and even, ensuring that borders are a consistent depth through measuring.