Elizabeth Forward High School in Pittsburgh, PA has revived the popular art of quilting as part of a consumer science class. There is a waiting list to enroll.
It all started with a student request. Rebecca Fest, consumer science instructor at Elizabeth Forward High, taught a student to quilt 15 years ago as a special project. The word got out to other students and now her five classes are full every semester.
The Tradition
Quilting is an American tradition. Pioneers had to be very frugal and owned few garments. When pieces of a garment wore out in certain spots and made it unusable, the rest of the fabric was recycled. The good fabric portions were cut into various shapes and made into quilts. In the winter, women would hand stitch intricate patterns and create works of art. And, the quilts were functional keeping family warm. However, like many traditions, quilting was becoming a fading hobby.
Pittsburgh
Quilting may be fading but not at Elizabeth Forward High School. Once Elizabeth Fest began teaching students how to quilt, the news spread throughout the school. She is now offering five classes and they are all full.
While quilting is seen as a quaint thing to do, the quilts the students create are anything but quaint. Some quilts are traditional, but most of them are original creations by the students mirroring their personalities and the personalities of the individuals they give the quilts to as gifts. You will see anything from a Double Wedding Ring creation to racing stripes and red lips on display.
The annual Art and Technology Fair displays over 60 quilts and boys as well as girls participate in the sewing. The traditional quilts were hand-stitched. The quilts at Elizabeth Forward are made on sewing machines, which produces quicker results. [Anya Sostek, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, April 18, 2008]
Project Linus
Students also donate quilts to a charity called Project Linus, which supplies the blankets to children in hospitals and foster care. There is something very comforting about a soft quilt that was made personally for you.
Fonda, IA
An unlikely hero involved in the September 11th tragedy is Betty Nielsen of Fonda, IA. Betty is a quilter who decided that every family that lost someone in the 2001 New York City tragedy should get a quilt. By forming a non-profit organization, Freedom Quilts, Betty achieved her Herculean goal and expanded it to donate a quilt to every family of a fallen American soldier.
Betty’s site, which tells her story on how this all began, is taking donations and shows pictures of donated quilts. Students at the local Newell-Fonda High School have donated quilts to Betty’s noble cause. Unlikely participants were some football players who contributed to the project by pressing fabric pieces and tying quilts. The surprising location for this massive and overwhelming effort is St. Columbkille's Catholic Church Parish Center in Varina, IA, population 90, where many of the quilts were made or finished.
While quilting glory days may have been in the 1930’s, the tradition is one that is changing but not ending.
Read previous articles on Educational Issues.
Copyright article 2008 Barbara Pytel. All Rights Reserved.
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