Jan 20

Teaching with Quilt Stories

by Jeanne Heiberg

Quilt-making is a great American art form that carries a message of faith, unity, and community. Here are some books for children and adults that illustrate how separate pieces of cloth arranged into a beautiful quilt bring unity to the quilt makers. You can use these stories to share with children, for adult reading groups and for family learning days. They work well used with teaching about and discussing the Sacraments of Reconciliation, Eucharist and Confirmation.

Books for children

The Quilt Story by author Tony Johnston and illustrator Tomie dePaolo (Putnam Juvenile, 1996). This warm story shows the closeness that grows between a woman and her daughter as they make a quilt together. The resulting quilt provides continuity, warmth, and love through changes in location and homes.

Quilting is for boys as well. Sam Johnson and the Blue Ribbon Quilt by Lisa Campbell Ernst (HarperCollins, 1992) is a beautiful example. The story evolves out of a quilting competition between the men and the women of a town. The teams are competitive, even mean and cheating, until the climax—when both finished quilts, placed in a wagon, are dumped into a mud puddle. The hard work and creativity of both teams are ruined. Everyone is devastated—until something good happens.

Someone points out that there are enough good parts in each quilt to make a single new one, if only the adversaries would agree to cooperate and work together in harmony. Disappointed and desperate, the men and women work together all night to combine two quilts into one and enter it in the competition on time. Their combined quilt, most original of all, wins the prize. Both teams are winners, with more shared happiness. Even without the prize, they were winners for learning to work in unity.

For Adults

In The Longing by Beverly Lewis (Bethany House
Publishers, 2008), Amish women look forward to
quilting bee get-togethers. They bring food, sit around
a quilting frame, stitch, and share stories, news, and
laughter. The quilt they create often is for someone soon
to wed or expecting a baby.

Prayers for Sale by Sandra Dallas (St. Martin’s Press, 2009), shows how a love of quilting fosters friendship between an aging resident, Hennie, and a lonely young newcomer, Nit, in a rough Colorado mining town of the 1930s. Hennie invites Nit to a quilting circle that includes mostly kind people, but also one with airs who quibbles and finds fault.

Hennie tells young Nit that a quilting circle is like a crazy quilt made up of all kinds of pieces—some big, some small, some plain, some fancy. Without each piece, Hennie says, the quilt would fall apart. Even the quilter who is a “trial” is needed. Around the quilting frame, the group comes together like the quilt itself. By the end of the book, even the person who is a “trial” becomes a kinder person, helping the newcomer in a crisis.

For a Quilt Making Craft that helps you teach about the Sacraments to use with children or in a family setting, click here.

Jeanne Heiberg is the author of Advent Arts & Christmas Crafts (Paulist Press) and Advent calendars (Creative Communications). She has taught art, writing, creative catechetics, and meditation, and has directed parish catechetical programs. Jeanne writes, paints, and gives writing workshops in upstate New York.

Source: CATECHIST Magazine, January 2010