quilt squares | Mama Cormier

….pottery and children’s Mother’s Day gifts

On Thursday I went to my pottery class and was delighted to find that my pot and platter had been fired and were ready to be glazed. Deciding on which glazes to use was probably the most difficult part of the process. It’s like deciding on what colour to paint a room. So many choices.

Before I tackled the glazing I cleaned up the berry bowl I started last week and it is now ready to be fired as well. Here is a photo of it upside down. I need to make a saucer to go underneath the bowl so that the water that drains from the berries has somewhere to go other than the table it is sitting on.

As most of you know I teach 110 students art at my school. This week I had many students trying to finish up projects that they could give their moms for Mother’s Day this Sunday. Most of these projects didn’t start off as gifts for mom but as the day got closer I may have suggested that they would make terrific presents. Unfortunately not all the students were able to finish their works of art and I encouraged them to give the project as is and then bring them back and finish them next week.

Next year I’m going to have to either plan earlier for a simple project that I can start with the students and then let the teacher finish it in class or leave the gift making entirely up to the homeroom teacher. It’s too difficult to organize that many projects when you only see students once a week for an hour and twenty minutes. Someone is always away or doesn’t use their class time well and then has nothing for me to evaluate or doesn’t finish special projects that are intended to be gifts.

Here are a few of the successful projects that are making their way home for Mom this weekend.

The top two projects were made by boys in grade 3. These quilt squares were completely hand stitched and then decorated with embroidery stitches and buttons. The third project was made by a girl in grade 4. In this class the students had to design a coat of arms and then they transfered the design onto a foam plate and rolled printer’s ink onto it and transferred it onto fabric. When the ink dried they attached a piece of batting to the underside and then stitched the lines with coloured threads (embroidery floss or crochet cotton). The student for this project wanted her piece attached to a bag which we purchased from a dollar store.

Here’s another quilted square made by a girl in grade 3. She decided to frame her piece. The stitching in her piece is outstanding.

Note the tiny cross-stitich that she added on the right side.

The student who completed the following piece took everything that I taught her about pioneer quilts to heart and included fabric from some of her clothes that she had outgrown. The pink ruffled fabric is from her pyjamas and the studded fabric in the middle came from a pair of socks. She liked the idea of making a frame from twigs to give it a rustic feel and made it completely on her own after I showed her how to attach the branches with a God’s Eye pattern. I was very surprised that she pulled it off because it was quite an awkward process. The only thing I helped her with was attaching the square to the inside of her frame. What do you think? Pretty amazing for an 8 year old.