An American Art Project

We are in our third week now and starting to get the hang of things a little more. The kids are still complaining about having to do school work, but I guess what kid doesn't do that at some point, right? Of course there wasn't much complaining today when I told them there was an art project in the plans.They finished their other work in no time!

This week we are learning about North America and specifically the United States. We had a list of art projects we could choose from but I thought it would be fun to do one related to good ol' America. So, we chose the Early American Quilt design project. 

The idea of the project was for the kids to design their own American quilts. We learned that quilting bees were one of the favorite social times for women of the early American colonies. They would meet and work together, working on one quilt at a time until each person had a completed quilt. It was also a good way for them to use up their scraps of fabric. Luckily for us, I just happened to have a pile of fabric scraps just waiting to be used!

First, I cut out a 12x12 piece of cardboard for the kids to use at their base (there was no actual sewing in this project, although we may do that sometime later down the line.) Then I cut out a 4x4 template so the kids could trace it onto their chosen material and cut it out.

They each decided they wanted every square to be different so they chose nine pieces of material for their squares and went to work. Once the squares were cut they glued them onto the cardboard in the pattern they wanted. Lastly they finished it off by gluing ribbon to the edges and making a hanger.

The finished "quilts"...beautiful!

Of course, they wanted them hung up on display for everyone to see. Sammy and I worked on the one in the middle together. Notice, there is NO pink per his request!!

 It was a really great project and we had a lot of fun working together on these. I'm guessing those women of the early American colonies did too!