This quilt was in the "Fabric of a Nation; American Quilt Stories" show at the Skirball Cultural Center this month.
During World War II, 17,814 men, women, and children of Japanese descent were held by the United States government at the Poston War Relocation Center in southwestern Arizona because they were perceived as a threat after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
This quilt was created by Japanese American children as a project in their fourth grade civics class after studying pioneer women. The scraps for this project were gathered from the barracks at this internment camp and each child cross stitched their names onto a block.
Think of that for a moment.
These children were studying the country the lived in, it's history and its promise, just as other children their age were doing across the country. The difference is they were doing it without the freedoms they were learning about in school.
Quite the American quilt story.
Though it was created in very different circumstances, this quilt reminded me of a quilt I worked on with one of my children's second grade class. Looking for a picture to share, I found that, actually, I had helped three classes with quilting projects. At the time I had no idea I was following in the footsteps of quilting tradition.
The first one was created for my youngest child's preschool teacher. She was just finishing her first year of teaching and it had been such a positive experience that we wanted to do something special for her.
Well, it turns out that my other child also had a first time teacher that year for first grade.
For each of these projects I had an "inside man" who surreptitiously had the students draw on a square of muslin taped down to a cardboard surface. Then I pulled them together for gift. (You can see the difference in drawing skills here between 4 year olds and 6 year olds.)
Tabs were attached across the top so they could be hung in the classrooms if desired.
The following year I was introduced to PTA fundraising through raffles, and I worked with a second grade class to create this quilt:
The students brain stormed ideas for the quilt theme, and then voted on it. They chose to go with a patriotic message and named their quilt, "America's Freedom."
Working on "America's Freedom"
It sold for a couple hundred dollars in a silent auction to one of the kids in the class. I know he loved that quilt. Many years later I ran in to his mom at a high school event and she shared that it was still on his bed after all those years.
All of these quilts are documentation of a moment in time. They celebrate the individualities within a group of people, and a growing sense of what it means to be creative and express yourself, - no matter what circumstances you find yourself in. Hopefully contributing to a collective project gave them important life lessons, but at the very least I hope it gave them that spark of joy that comes with creating.
Comments
Post a Comment