Piecing Together Prairies

Lesson Introduction

Making a quilt replica is a way to introduce students to folk art, which is one way to study the culture of a people. The European-Americans who settled Illinois were pioneers, people who had to depend on their own skills and resourcefulness to survive. This means they had to make most everything they needed to use, from tools and furniture to candles and clothes.

A quilt is a three-layered blanket, most often two outer layers of cloth stuffed with an insulating material called "batting." Quilts are often made from many smaller pieces of fabric, cut from old clothing to recycle the material. For centuries pioneers recycled their goods out of necessity and sometimes sewed old clothing into quilts, both express their creativity and creating needed warmth. Among different quilt-making cultures, traditional patterns emerged which had names from the Bible, from the work people did, from the Depression, and other sources. Quilts could even be used to tell a history or story in a culture that had few books and fewer writers. A modern dramatic example of a quilt that tells a story is the quilt created by the NAMES project, a giant art quilt depicting the names and stories of people who have been died from AIDS.

For more about the lives of Illinois settlers, see At Home in the Heartland at the Illinois State Museum homepage and Illinois Women Pioneers.

In this lesson, students will collaborate a la "quilting bee" to make a replica quilt that tells a story.

Illinois State Goal	Standard	Learning Benchmarks
26	B	2d. Demonstrate knowledge and skills to create works of visual art using problem solving, observing, designing, sketching and constructing.
27	B	2d. Identify and describe how the arts communicate the similarities and differences among various people, places and times.

Lesson Objectives

• create a replica of a quilt
• learn how art can be functional
• learn how art can reflect the culture of a people

Advance Preparation

Obtain a short story for the class' quilt (see Illinois Pioneer Women for possibilities or invent your own).

Divide the story into six to eight parts, further divided into four shorter parts (there should be one part for each student). Number the parts the order they tell the story so they can be reassembled later.

Time Allotment

two class periods of 45 to 75 minutes

Materials

• one "story board" page per student
• markers, pencils, crayons
• needle and strong thread (or fabric glue)
• one large bed sheet
• fabric paint
• one 12 inch square of muslin fabric per student
• books, slides, or examples of quilts that show traditional patterns and meanings

PROCEDURE

Tap Prior Knowledge

1.Ask students if they have ever made something useful. Was it something they could have just bought? What would they do if they were stranded on an island with no way to buy new clothes or tools?

Share with Neighbor

2. Have students imagine that they are pioneers living in Illinois out on the prairie. What kinds of things would you have to make yourself? If you did not have any pencils or books, and few people could read, how could you record a story?

Hands-on Activity, Part 1

3. Read a short story (perhaps one of those from Illinois Women Pioneers) to the class.
4. Help the class summarize the parts of the story and write them on the chalk board.
5. Divide the class into groups of four.
6. Give each group part of the story, divided into four shorter parts (numbered in order of the story), one part for each student in the group.
7. pass out one story square to each student and ask them to tape their part of the story under the story square and then draw one thing (a person, an animal, a place, or an object) that shows their part of the story.
8. When they are finished, collect them and arrange them in order.

Hands-on Activity, Part 2

9. Give the students their story squares and tell them that they are going to put them together like a quilt.
10. First each student will paint a picture on a piece of fabric.
11. Each group will be put their painted pictures together with thread or glue.
12. Put the squares representing parts of the story in order and attach them to a bed sheet with the thread or the glue. This cooperative project is very similar to the work done at a quilting bee. At a quilting bee, the participants, usually women, bring quilt parts that have been pieced together and then assemble them, working together as a team.

Introduce Arts Principle

13. Quilting is a form sometimes called folk art, which means it is an art form made by ordinary people, not professional artist, and is usually functional. Throughout human history, most people, "folk", did not have the luxury of using scarce resources to make art for its aesthetic value. Still, the impulse to create meaningful images exists in every culture, perhaps in all people, and whenever a crafts person had the time to make some useful tool, clothing, or furniture, she could carve, or etch or paint it into a work of art.

Relate Activity and Concept

Learning Outcomes

• make a piece of a replica quilt
• describe how art can be functional
• describe how folk art can reflect the culture of a people

Internet Connections

Illinois Pioneers

Quilting

• Quilt History
• Amish Quilts
• Quilt Block Names

Books

Ringgold, Faith. Tar Beach. New York : Crown Publishers, 1991.
Ernst, Lisa Cambell. Sam Johnson and the Blue Ribbon Quilt. New York: William Morrow & Company, 1992. ISBN: 0688115055