Sawtoothed Star and Colonial Days

The fourth graders have a Colonial Day at school and parents volunteer to help kids experience what life might have been like.  There were many different sessions for kids to chose from. They could make butter, create and play colonial games, do stenciling, tin punching, doll making, and my session on quilting.

A star block was not something I had made before. I had a mini quilt with wonky star blocks to show, but I also wanted to show a traditional saw toothed star block. I found a tutorial with a trick to make four flying geese at once.  

I had offered a quilting session when my first child had been a fourth grader and learned some interesting things along the way. First of all, quilting was not really done very much initially. Life was too hard to have time to quilt. When quilting was being done, it was more of whole cloth quilts, applique quilting, and then Medallion quilts. I shared information about each of these styles and provided 6" square quilt sandwiches for each student. 

In doing my research I also learned about some typical sewing projects from that time.  Most girls did an alphabet sampler.  Another interesting thing I came across was the pocket.  Pockets were not sewn into women's garments.  A pocket was made and tied around the waist.  It was accessible through an opening in the woman's skirts side seams.

Both times I did this, I provided examples and the kids seemed to enjoy coming up with something to applique to their quilt sandwich.









 It was interesting that many kids this year appliqued their initials.  Maybe they were thinking about the alphabet samplers.