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Rachel's Crazy Quilt At one time it was common to make quilts to tuck you in at night. Some quilts were carefully pieced together and formed precise geometric patterns. Others were made out of scraps of material that people collected from worn-out clothes. These quilts were called "crazy" quilts. In A Mighty Big Imagining, Rachel tells her friend Anne-Marie about the quilts on the plantation where she used to live, and how each quilt had a special meaning for the slaves who made them. A great deal of work went into making those quilts: women like Rachel's mother would have to work on them in the evenings, at the end of a long, hard day. And of course there were no sewing machines in 1783! Every stitch had to be sewn by hand. Make your own crazy quilt out of paper by following the instructions below: Materials
Instructions
2. Take a sheet of 8½" x 11" paper and set it in front of you. This paper will be used to help you create the design for your crazy quilt. 3. Start to arrange paper scraps on top of the piece of paper you are working with. Move scraps around until they fit in a pattern that you like — if a scrap of paper is a funny shape you can trim it with scissors. Make sure you've covered the entire sheet of paper with paper scraps. When you're done arranging the scraps into a pattern, carefully move the paper and scraps to one side, keeping the design in place. 4. Set the second sheet of 8½" x 11" paper in front of you. 5. Take scraps from the collage you've just arranged and start gluing them to the paper in front of you, following the design you've created on your sample piece of paper. 6. Squirt some of the white glue into the plastic container you have on hand and add some water — just enough to make the glue as runny as milk. Now dip the brush in the glue and apply some glue to the plain piece of white paper in the spot where you want your first scrap to go. 7. Stick the scrap down, smoothing it out carefully with your fingers. Keep gluing down scraps, one by one, until the collage you made is glued down on the second piece of paper. 8. Let your quilt dry. This may take an hour or two. 9. Now it's time to decorate your quilt. There are all sorts of fun things you can do: squiggle glitter glue over some of the scraps, draw lines of x's along the edges of the scraps (to make it look like you sewed the pieces together), or draw pictures on scraps without any patterns. When your crazy quilt is done, you can put it in a frame or slip it into the front of a binder with a clear plastic pocket. Or just stick it on your fridge at home! |
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