We ran our quilt clubs and quilt classes several different times and several different ways. Our first try was a quilt club that was offered to students on a weekly basis every Friday night for the school year beginning in September and ending the following May. During that time the students would learn different quilting techniques and make they made several different variations of quilts.
They made a rag quilt, pieced quilt, memory quilt, and a small applique quilt. Even though the quilt club was enjoyed by all and the accomplishments for the year were overwhelming, we found that if a student missed a week or two it was very hard for them to get caught up. Most of the students that joined our weekly quilt club were already a student here another night of the week in our regular sewing class, and joining the quilt club gave them a second night at the studio sewing. With other personal activities, this did not allow much make-up time for missed classes. We ran this type of quilt club for two consecutive years.
After that, we felt it was too much on students so we stopped our quilt club that ran all year and began to offer different quilting workshops. We found this to be much better. We ran 3-4 week quilting workshops where students would meet for several hours on the weekend and make a certain type of quilt. Raggedy quilts, memory quilts, t-shirt quilts, butterfly quilts, and applique quilts were made in these different workshops.
We also held all-day quilt workshops where the students would be here from breakfast until dinner and complete a quilt in a day. For those we hired out a helper to prepare the meals for us. Students loved this! Some quilt workshops were for an event. Several times we held all day quilt workshops for a giving back project like “Kids with Cancer” or “Quilts for Comfort”, both events were children making quilts for other sick children. The newspapers did several articles on these events for us because they were so thrilled that kids were sewing quilts for other kids in need. What a blessing it was to host those events. I made sure that I gave the students who dedicated a whole day of sewing a quilt for someone else something special. For each of those kinds of events I made a “goodie bag” filled with fun little gifts for the students as a thank you.
We also have quilt camps where the student will spend their first week of camp making “My First Quilt.” Once they have finished that if they wanted to do a second week of quilt camp then we had them make a raggedy quilt. After completing those two quilts which are the easiest to make because both only require straight stitch, then we would let them make a memory quilt or a more advance quilt with curves like an applique quilt or an advance pieced quilt like an American flag quilt.
Here are links on how to make the different kinds of quilts:
One Response
Audrey Million
Do you have lower tables for the young children, or do you find they can manage with regular size tables?