Fast and Fun Quilt Blocks

Today I helped the 5th grade Language Arts class as they made quilt blocks. This was the concluding activity for their unit on The House of Dies Drear by Virginia Hamilton, a mystery involving a house in Ohio which was used as an Underground Railroad station. As they read the book, the students learned about the bravery and struggle of slaves running for freedom, the abolitionists who helped them, and the belief of some historians that symbols in quilts were used to direct fleeing Blacks towards safe houses and routes to freedom. In their activity today, the children looked at photos of quilt blocks. They then cut a muslin square and a background fabric to a specified size and used dots of glue stick to glue them together. They cut out triangles, squares and rectangles and glued them down to the background fabric in whatever design pleased them. Using a sewing machine they then quilted the whole sandwich together and sewed down the shapes, all in one step. So the blocks weren't pieced, but raw edge appliqued. Finally, they hand-sewed on a button.

The kids brought in fabrics and a button. The teacher and parents supplied the pre-cut muslin, a variety of additional fabrics, sewing machines, and instruction.

I manned a sewing machine and it was lots of fun to watch kids sew down their designs. Many had never worked a machine before. They were fascinated and delighted that they could manage it. Several told me that "I learned to sew today." And even though they hadn't sewn a seam in the traditional sense, they certainly controlled a sewing machine and had used fabric, texture, color, pattern, and line to make wonderful quilt blocks. I got so excited by the results that I want to try some of my own this weekend.