In the last week before Christmas, I spent three days working with Little e's first grade class.
On the first day, we brainstormed ideas for the project, I detail that process here.
The second day, each student was given a slip of paper with a letter and the ideas the class had come up with for that letter. They were asked to draw a pencil sketch of one of those ideas.
Here is a zebra for the letter Z.
And, an owl for letter O.
On the third classroom session, the children were pulled from class one by one, so they could choose fabric to "color" their sketch. This is a process that really is best done with one on one attention. An adult helper encourages the children to pull out the fabric, to make a mess, and to really look.
The trick for the adult is to encourage, to give gentle advice about contrast or pattern (ie: "that fabric detail may not appear if you use two yellow fabrics."), but no editing is done by the adult. This process is about the child, and if they choose yellow dots for their tiger that is their artistic expression.
This is the Zebra complete with playful, plaid head and polka dotty stripes.
And here is the Owl with its colorful plumage.
I give detailed instructions on using fusible web to go from sketch to quilt here.
With first graders, their part of the process ends here.
They've given me the story in their pictures and fabrics, and all I have to do is assemble their sketches in fabric form and lay out the images in a quilted format.
So I have these wonderful images, and I just need to figure out how to arrange them.
I decided to make a tryptic of quilts, and divided the images into three groups. This cluster represents the letters K through R.
With this project, since the images represent the alphabet I set the images according to their letter order from left to right. So, I start with the kite, then the leopard, the monkey, the the newt, the owl, the pea pod and the possum, the quilt, ending with the radio and the rose.
The order is a loose interpretation, so there can be more interesting interplay between the images. Then, I fill in the background a bit. Since the possum was drawn hanging from a tree limb, I create a tree using the fabric chosen by the student, which makes a great place to place the monkey and the owl.
I will leave the elements of the wall hanging pinned in place for a couple days, so I can move bits, adjust arrangements, and fine tune things. I take lots of photographs, so I can see if I liked an earlier version better. When I'm satisfied, I'll take final photos, take the whole things apart, and then begin to fuse the elements down. After the background is in place, I will topstitch the edges, before laying down the next level of detail. After everything is fused and sewn in place, I'll add final details, like the possum's eyes, and the details on the radio.
I know this sounds like a lot of work, but it really goes quite quickly. The best advice I can give to someone who wants to do a project like this is to remain calm. Take it bit by bit, and remember the children are the artists, you are just assembling what they have created.