November 16, 2011

Art From the Heart

Teach In Quilt Strip Layout
Today at the Great American Teach-In, I attempted to show the first grade students in my daughters class, that art is made with our hands, mind, eyes, and hearts.  To take that one step further is to say that because art comes from your heart it is pure and good no matter what it looks like nor what others might think of it.  I think I lost them a little on that point but guess what?  As I'm making a quilt from the strips the children picked I get to reinforce that point when I make the quilt label.

Teach-In Thanks
I am now I'm the proud owner of a Certificate of Appreciation as well as a school mug.  One of these days I'll hang all these letters and so forth up in the sewing room so that I can marvel at them.  The mug was a surprise as I truly didn't expect anything.  I met a fellow quilter while at the school, and we all know it's nice to meet someone that thinks like we do in our travels.  I also met a mom who had met my daughter, currently her daughter is in DD's class last year, believe it or not she proceeded to tell me about my own DD without knowing I'm DD's mom.  How about that.

I am really looking forward to getting started on this quilt.  As a strip quilt I doubt it will take long and it is sure to be fun so I started laying out the children's fabric strips right away.  I wasn't sure about the layout of the fabric, so of fussing over it to long, instead I went to my leftovers pile and looked for a strip that matched what the teacher told me her favorite color is.  She said blues to greens.  Thereby I picked the strip that runs across the bottom of the upper picture to make the applique teacher's pencil and I think that helped pull the colors together.   I think the appliqued pencil will be thicker than that as I plan to make a tube and then applique it on that way running at an angle over the bottom right corner of the quilt.  No one picked grey so that will be good for making the metal that holds a pencil on and I have a pretty pink polka dotted fabric for the eraser.  I'm not sure about a wood color for the sharpened part but I should be able to come up with something and the lead point should be okay too.

2 comments:

Vicki said...

It is interesting to see the colours that the children picked as their favorites, mostly reds, pinks, purples, blues and greens. No one bothered with yellow, orange, brown or black. With the teacher liking greens and blues that one batik is perfect and I agree it really does pull the other colours together.

QuiltSue said...

I agree with everything Vicki has said. My first thought was about the colours the children picked, then I realised how well the teacher's choice ties it all together.