Art+Craft:Young Hands Quilting Community

The final teaching sessions with the Grade 3 to 7 students involve trying out hand quilting. This skill is one that takes many hours, weeks, months and years to master. While we had the raffle quilt quilted by a professional, the art quilts are being quilted by the students and myself. Above is our classroom setting for quilting. I put out quilting books, examples of stitching and then pass out small quilt sandwiches (two pieces of fabric with quilting batting between them) The students then get to practice quilting. Students worked hard to get the rhythm. Once they felt more confident they began working on sections of the art quilts. We will continue working on these panels until their big reveal at the Quilt Project Assembly on May 24, 2018.

We are hard at work after our Winter Holiday break. The first three weeks of January are all about learning to use the sewing machines, constructing 120 rail fence quilt blocks and sewing those blocks into our quilt top. These blocks are for our queen size quilt which will be raffled off to raise money for the school. Some tape helps the students to keep their sewing lines straight. Three strips become two blocks which we then trim into 7.5 inch squares The iron station is very popular with the students. As we were discussing pattern choices and block layouts we moved the squares around to see all the possibilities. Along with piecing the blocks we have also begun sewing the blocks together into our quilt top.  In the end we will have 12 rows with 10 blocks in each row. We expect the raffle quilt to be finished with the piecing portion by the end of this month.

Our last two weeks have seen the students learning about the tools of quilt making and cutting fabric for our Raffle Quilt. Each of the six classes who are making the raffle quilt have learned about the tools used for quilting and needlework. Filling out worksheets to learn the names and uses of the tools helps develop their vocabulary for a new skill before the tools are used. The students are then asked to gather in pairs and use a rotary cutter to cut 3 x 16 inch strips.  We need 60 strips of each of the three fabric colours to create 120 blocks. One more class is left to cut fabric and then we move on to sewing.