Quilting and Culture: Using Alice Walker's "Everyday Use" To Learn about African-American Quilting
By Tracy Ajello

Overview

Students will investigate how slaves communicated through quilting, how African-American culture emerged amid slavery, and how fabric and quilted forms of communication continue today. Students will view images of some African-American quilts, analyze messages, read and analyze literature related to quilting, and, finally, design their own quilts (or portions of quilts). This lesson is appropriate for grades 8-12, but can be adapted for younger students.

Curriculum Standards

For a list of standards that this unit addresses, click here.

Time Required

At least three to five, 45 minute-one hour class periods for each lesson element (each element could stand as an independent lesson).

Materials

• Short story, "Everyday Use," by Alice Walker available on:
  http://www.professorluscher.com/Literature/Other%20Short%20Stories/everyday_use.htm
  
• Graphic organizer, included


• Journal questions and prompts, included


• Crayons, colored pencils, markers, graph paper (to create quilt square design)


• Fabric, needles, thread, fabric markers (optional for anyone who wants to create fabric version)


• Signs and Symbols: African Images in African-American Quilts by Maude Southwell Wahlman, 2001


• Internet and/or library access to materials, for instance, at:


• Yale University Art Gallery: http://www.yale.edu/artgallery/exhibitions/2002_ninequilts.htm


• The Whitney Museum site: http://www.whitney.org/programs/educators.shtml (The Whitney Museum site has a great pre- and post-visit materials section to Gee's Bend quilt exhibition that students may download.)
  
• Harriet Powers web site: http://womensearlyart.net/powers (This is an excellent web site for information on Harriet Powers.)

The Lesson

Anticipatory Set

Show students at least three quilt images. You can find the most vivid ones at the Harriet Powers, Gee's Bend, or Yale Art Gallery exhibits. You can also introduce students to the work of someone presently working in cloth, for instance Faith Ringgold.

Ask students what these quilts have in common:

• How do they use geometry?


• How do they use measurement?


• What materials do they use?


• What message is the artist trying to convey?

Have students observe different styles and look for meaning, geometric shapes, mathematics, etc. in these quilt images throughout the next three lessons.

Procedures

Day One

1. Have students read "Everyday Use" by Alice Walker--They can find it at:
   http://www.professorluscher.com/Literature/Other%20Short%20Stories/everyday_use.htm.


Or, for differentiated learning options (reading levels) and supplemental information, students also can read:


• Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt: a children's book designed for young readers, second grade).



• Stitching Stars: The Story Quilts of Harriet Powers by Mary E. Lyons: a book for students at the sixth grade reading level.



• Hidden in Plain View: A Secret Story of Quilts and the Underground Railroad by Jacqueline L. Tobin and Raymond G. Dobard, Ph.D.: a text for advanced readers.


2. After they have read "Everyday Use," have students journal or begin discussing the questions on the "Everyday Use" Reading Comprehension Sheet: [link to question sheet, below]



3. Assign students to re-read the story for homework and finish the reading comprehension sheet.

Day Two

1. Have students use the web sites offered to view several African-American quilts and African-American art. If you have access to a computer lab, students could do their own searches and/or you could bookmark some of quilt sites listed. If you don't have a computer lab, you can print out hard copies of the sites ahead of time and/or use copies of quilt books such as Harriet Powers, Hidden in Plain View, Sweet Sarah and the Freedom Quilt.


Then, divide the class into groups, with each group viewing one book and filling out the graphic organizer [link to graphic organizer, below] as they go. When they've finished, have the groups then switch books until each group has observed at least four different types of quilts and analyzed their messages.


2. Have students discuss orally or in their journals the following questions:


• Why would slaves need to create fabric stories as opposed to written ones?



• What type of stories did they want to share?



• How did they pass down knowledge of personal and African-American history and traditions?



• What forms of personal creative expression were available to slaves?



• How could quilting be a way of showing the way of Underground Railroad? [See Hidden in Plain View]



• As African Hausa designs showed maps in quilts, how did slaves transfer this knowledge to quilting? [See Hidden in Plain View]



• How did knots in quilting share a message with the nkisi makolo in the Kongo that used charms and knots to empower objects?



• Why did slaves choose the form of communication that you see in Ozella's Underground Railroad quilt code (pp. 23. 24), where the monkey wrench turns the wagon wheel, etc. [See Hidden in Plain View]



• Why was the Cotton and Satin Bow Tie quilt a message to wear fancy clothes? [See Hidden in Plain View]



• How did the African lukasa (memory board) translate to Native American quilts? [See Hidden in Plain View]



• How did slaves use stitches, knots, fabric color, and quilt patterns to help them communicate? [See Hidden in Plain View]



• In quilting maps of plantations and ways to get off them, how were slaves able to communicate these messages without being discovered? [See Hidden in Plain View]



• How would you compare and contrast slave and historic African-American quilts to today's artists, such as Faith Ringghold, Michael Cummings, Bearden, John Biggers? [See p. 156 of Hidden in Plain View]



• How would you compare and contrast messages that quilters were trying to share?



• Can you name the various ways African Americans share their stories through quilting?



3. Ask each group to choose one quilt to analyze. For instance, they could pick a Gee's Bend quilter, America Irby, Nettie Young, Annie Mae Young, Jessie T. Pettway, Leola Pettway, Linda Pettway, Harriet Powers, Ozella, or Faith Ringghold. Then have tem share what they've discovered with class. While the class listens, they can fill in more information they learn from the presentations on their own graphic organizer.



4. Assign students to finish their graphic organizers for homework and hand them in as an assessment.

Day Three

1. Have each student (or group of students, if you choose) design his/her/their own quilt or squares. They can choose to represent any of the following points of view:


• A slave trying to show the way on the Underground Railroad;



• Someone from Maggie or Mama's or Grandma's generation ("Everyday Use"); or



• An artist today who works with fabric, for instance Faith Ringghold, Ozella, any of Gee's Bend or Yale Art Gallery black American quilt artists,



• A slave making a sampler of quilt codes, Harriet Powers (Jacob's Ladder, geometric language, and oral traditions), or any other one you approve.


2. Tell students they must write diary entries (paragraphs) from the point of view of the quilter attached to the final quilt design. They should explain the iconography (meaningful images), signs, symbols, stitches, memory triggers, or "mnemonic devises" they used in creating their quilt designs. Their designs and diary also must share messages of slave life, history, or tradition. Have students use the web sites provided to help understand more about quilting.

You could have students create quilts from fabric as part of a culmination activity for a unit on slavery.

Assessment

Each lesson element has an assessment piece built in: Literature comprehension questions, the journal questions and graphic organizer; and the quilt design and diary.

Related Links

• Quilt and Quiltmaking in America: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/qlthtml/qltgloss.html
  
  
• Quilters and their Stories: http://www.smithsonianmag.si.edu/smithsonian/issues99/feb99/highopener_feb99.html
  
  
• America's Quilting History: http://www.womenfolk.com/historyofquilts/
  
  
• Freedom Quilting Bee: http://www.ruraldevelopment.org/FQB.html
  
  
• The Quilt Channel: http://www.quiltchannel.com/History/index.htm
  
  
• Quilts and Quiltmaking in America: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpedu/collections/quilts/qulintro.html
  
  
• Anniina's Alice Walker Page: http://www.luminarium.org/contemporary/alicew/
  
  
• Major Quilting Sites: http://www.quiltchannel.com/majorsites.htm
  
  
• Alice Walker Gateway: http://jimcrowhistory.org/resources/gateway/gw_walker.htm

Tracy Ajello is a teacher at the Doolittle School in Connecticut.

Name______________________

Answer or explain the following questions/issues:

1. When looking through the perspectives of Dee, Maggie and Mama, what is the focus of each woman's life? Compare and contrast the three different impressions.



2. Why does Dee want the dasher and other implements made by her family?



3. Describe the ‘Lone Star' and ‘Walk Around the Mountain' patterns containing scraps of dresses Grandma Dee had worn over 50 years ago, pieces of Grandpa Jattell's paisley shirts, Great Grandpa Ezra's Civil War uniform.



4. Dee (Wangero) had been offered a quilt when she went away to college but turned it down because it was old-fashioned. Why is she saying now that they're "priceless?"



5. Dee wanted to hang the quilts whereas Maggie would put them to everyday use. In your opinion, examine each point of view, whose purpose for the quilts is right?



6. Maggie said, "She can have them, Mama…I can ‘member Grandma Dee without the quilts." What is the reasoning behind Mama's decision to give the quilts to Maggie?



7. What message does this story give about the way an individual understands his or her present life in relation to his or her culture, traditions, and heritage?



8. How do the quilts reflect the family's history?

Quilt Code or Iconography: Students will research using print and electronic resources to complete graphic organizer.
Title of Quilt / Name of Quilter / Type of Quilt	Source	Message Quilt Shares (or Teaches) / Part of Quilt Code	Materials, Type of Stitches, Knots, Fabric, etc...	Illustration of Quilt / Portion of Quilt	Cities / Children
Ex. Ozella	Hidden in Plain View	Monkey wrench turns wagon wheel, tells slaves when to leave, journey low country South Carolina to Appalachian Mt. to Ohio to Cleveland	Cloth...