Why use this page?

The Celebration Quilts 2001 exhibition commemorates events in Australian history through a creative art form. The categories, such as Australia at War, Towards a Republic, Women's Work, are interpreted by some of the finest quilt artists in Australia in a very personal way. The Celebration Quilts 2001 website provides a snapshot of these beautiful quilts.

Below are some ideas for teachers and adult educators. These ideas for creating and thinking about quilts demonstrate how effectively quilting can be used in the classroom as a tool for exploring a number of different themes. As well as encouraging students to gain skills in quilting by visiting the Celebration Quilts 2001 website, you can encourage young people to take up this ancient and still evolving pastime.

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Using the Canberra Quilter's website

Educators and students can use the internet to link to their local quilters' groups. They may invite a quilter to speak about personal experiences of quilting - their motivation, gathering of ideas and putting ideas into action; choosing a style, creating colour, selecting appropriate fabric; the logistics of planning and creating the final quilt.

Available from the Canberra Quilters website is a copy of the Celebration Quilts 2001 catalogue which provides a very colourful and thought-provoking teaching tool.

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Linking quilts to key learning areas

These activities are designed for stand-alone activities for the individual, for small group work and for integration into a class project.

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English

Quilts can tell the story of a family through the items sewn together from different places, events and special times. In this exercise we look at quilts as narratives - that is, as stories where events occur over time.

All good stories have characters and problems. Often the stories show us how some particular people deal with problems in their lives.

• Your task is to look at the many and wonderful quilts in this website and find one that tells you a story , that presents a narrative. Of course the story you see in the quilt may not be the same as the story the next person sees from the same quilt, but that is the power of your unique imagination!
  
  
• What parts of the quilt speak to you about the life of the quilt maker? What is the story that the quilt is telling you? More importantly, how does the quilt relate to events in your own life?
  
  
• Write a short story with three main characters based on the narrative you find in one of the quilts in this website. Remember, your story should have the characters confronted by a problem (war, natural disasters, love, and many other potential problems may be seen in the images) and then by the end of the story the characters have either solved the problem, or been changed by the problem.

Your story is a narrative quilt, but using words!

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Society and Environment

Develop a local history of quilting. Interview local people and search for events that may have been commemorated in quilts. You might look at local newspaper cuttings, visit a craft society or local history museum to discuss what role quilting has had in your local community. Prepare an illustrated booklet for the local historical society, school website or craft society.

• Prepare a time-line of significant events for yourself, town, class or school. Write a short story about each event. Then plan to make a quilt using these stories as the theme. Each group or individual will need to sketch their part of the story on a sheet of paper then link the sheets together to create an overview of the final quilt. Use these sheets as a pattern to create the quilt. Gather fabric, identify what quilting technique to use, for example hand or machine sewing, using fabric glue, and cut out individual squares, circles, or triangles to join together.
  
  
• Describe what you see in your local environment. Brainstorm what you think are important environmental issues. Examine the images of the Celebration Quilts 2001 and discuss how these quilts reflect significant issues of the last 100 years. How would you record your chosen environmental issues and how might you show children and communities in 2100 what's happening now? Make a postcard of your quilt or create a display for World Environment Day or invite a local personality to unveil your "Quilt of the Future".
  
  

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Science and Technology

Use your computer to create your own "quilt web page". Decide on a theme, e.g. inventions of the past 100 years. After brainstorming what you might include, search the net for images. You could include inventions such as aeroplanes, harvesters, solar energy, television, radio, electricity, computers or even fizzy drinks! Cut and paste these onto your personal, class or school website to create your own electronic quilt. You might send this to another school, a local craft society or quilters' group.

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Mathematics

One of the important issues in creating a quilt is planning the design.

• Students might decide on a particular size of quilt for display in the classroom, school hall etc. By measuring the display area and deciding on the percentage that may be allowed for the quilt, you can then draw a paper plan for the overall size of the quilt. Quilts don't have to be square, they can be circular or triangular - experiment with your class to see what ideas might work.
  
  
• Map an area of the classroom, school ground or town and prepare a quilt based on the map. To plan each quilt, take pieces of paper, e.g. squares or triangles, and measure how many pieces would be needed to make a large quilt. On these pieces of paper draw the pattern of each quilt segment. Alternatively these patterns could be used as a quilt border with abstract designs.
  
  

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Creative Arts

Gathering and selecting appropriate materials for quilts can be an exciting process.

• Visiting a second-hand clothing shop, visiting older members of the community who might have samples of fabric from the past, or collecting current fabrics from home and school, could be used to prepare a textiles history lesson. The fabrics chosen can be carefully prepared to create a lively and original display quilt on "Fabrics Now And In The Past". Adding to the visual display could be the story behind each piece of fabric.
  
  
• Diverse art printing techniques can be used to show how different fabric responds to processes such as potato printing etc and how other techniques, such as screen printing, Batik and tie dyeing, can be used to accomplish an integrated theme. Using fabric paint, fabric glue for collage, embroidery, weaving, etc can all be part of skills development through creating quilts. Create a quilt "sampler" that demonstrates the diversity of techniques used in quilting.
  
  

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Music

Listen to music that reflects Australia's heritage, classical or contemporary music.

• Listen to music and sketch the images that the music inspires, or choose the words or feelings that each sound evokes, or the story that's told through music. Use current or past music, e.g. Waltzing Matilda, We Are Australian, I Still Call Australia Home, to create a "Music Tells The Story" quilt. This quilt could also be created on a computer using a musical accompaniment to enliven each image, or as a teaching tool for school mentoring programs where students can play a piece of music or sing a song using the quilt as a textural story.
  
  
• Plan a quilt based on a "making music" theme where groups of instruments can be quilted to create a folk, jazz, pop group or brass band quilt as a theme.
  
  

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