Third-graders’ project will accompanythem as they move to new school
By:Laura Toto
As part of Young Author’s Day, a districtwide project has begun to weave all third-graders in the elementary schools together through quilting.
The concept of quilting for all of the young students was offered by Elizabeth Fletcher-Federici, who is on the Young Author’s Day committee of Woodfern Elementary School. Ms. Fletcher-Federici’s daughter, currently a third-grader, will be part of the first fifth grade to move to Auten Road School when it is converted to an intermediate school in the 2002-03 school year. Ms. Fletcher-Federici’s other committee members saw the idea as a way to make the children less apprehensive about the transition.
Through the support of Dottie Cassimatis, chairwoman of the Young Author’s Day Committee, ideas began to be shared with Woods Road Elementary School, where teachers also had the idea to do quilting for Young Author’s Day.
Both schools decided to share ideas and presentations for the day, but it took dedicated staff throughout the district to pull the project together.
"We are weaving the thread of friendship throughout the district," Ms. Fletcher-Federici said. "Quilting is a community thing."
All third-graders in the district received a patch to put their initials on and create something that represented themselves. From there, the patches were given to Sheila Curran, Woodfern’s artist-in-residence, and she sewed them all onto larger quilts for all of the district schools.
As a fourth-grade project for next year, the children will create prose to be written in blank patches on the quilts. Then, the 24 quilts will be sewn together and presented at the District Art Festival.
Finally, the quilt will be placed at Auten Road School, to welcome its creators when they begin classes there.
"They will be able to read the prose and follow the quilt and thread it through the school," Ms. Fletcher-Federici said,
Woodfern’s third-graders also have had pen-pal relationships with Auten Road third-graders throughout the year. On Friday, as requested by Debbie Burns of Auten Road, the third-graders from Auten Road were transported to Woodfern to meet and work with their pen pals as well as attend the assembly "Seven Quilts for Seven Sisters."
The assembly was a way for the children to understand the story-telling aspect of quilting, especially how quilting was used during slavery.
The performers, Phyllis Amanda Walker and her sister Kathleen Lindsey, told stories of how the quilts would be placed on a bush or clothes line to indicate a "safe house" in the underground railroad.
They told the story of Sweet Clara’s Freedom Quilt, a quilt designed by a slave which was a map, containing landmarks, cotton fields, cornfields and apple orchards. It also contained white lines that were roadways and blue lines that were waterways leading north.
They also explained the 16 coded quilt patterns used, such as a bear’s claw, which meant follow the tracks of the bear, and Jacob’s Ladder, which was created by the Quakers to indicate the safe houses.