"Founding Mothers": A new look at an old quilt

 WARNING: THE CONSERVATIVES AMONG YOU MAY WANT TO SKIP THIS POST.

"Founding Mothers" is a quilt I made in Indiana many years ago.  (And yes, before Cokie Roberts wrote her book of the same title!) It grew out of a school project that Anna was doing when she was in fifth grade.  It was called the Living Museum.  The students had to choose a person from American history, write a speech about that person, dress like them, and then when the parents visited, they stood up gave their speech.  When Anna came home after the parts had been chosen, I asked her who she was going to be and she said Martin Van Buren.  I asked why she wasn't portraying a famous woman and she said, "Because, Mom.  There was only Betsey Ross and Pocahontas on the list and somebody already got them."  I suggested that we call her teacher and ask if we could research another famous American woman.  Naturally, he agreed and we set to work going to the library to do some research.  She ended up portraying Deborah Sampson, a woman who had dressed as a man to fight in the American Revolution.  That research was the beginning of this quilt.

 Naturally, the American flag color scheme was sort of a no-brainer given the Betsey Ross beginnings of the research.  The little quilt in the center has blocks that commemorate special women or things that affect women. Anna has a little block all her own!  The center is a cross-stitch of Abigail Adams famous quote exhorting her husband to "remember the ladies." If you click on the photo above to enlarge it, you can see that the quilting lines are actually names of American women I wanted to commemorate.  My mother, and both of my grandmothers are included.  The photos above were only on slides until we recently had our slide collections digitized.  I'm glad to get to share some of my older work.

This is also one of the little center blocks.  The quote is from Florynce Kennedy, an American lawyer, feminist, and civil rights activist: "If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament."  I made a tiny hanger out of wire and the little banner says, "Remember Roe vs. Wade."  This quilt was displayed at the Indiana State Fair  around 1982.  It won a ribbon, but the quilt was draped to hide this block.  Another time, it was on display at a museum and one of the docents found a man trying to remove the little hanger from the block.

This post today was prompted by something one of my friends. a young educator and feminist, posted on Facebook.

from the Americans Against the Republican Party Facebook page

I know this is a volatile issue, but whatever your belief, the way to end abortion is not to outlaw it.  It is to end the need for abortion and that can only be done through education and access to birth control.  Quilted Librarian stepping off the soap box and back into the studio.

November 4, 2012 update:

This is why I love my family so much:

Dialoging with student librarians

 For the third year in a row, I am once again working with my former professor, Dr. Larry Johnson, and his library media specialist students from the School of Library and Information Science at Indiana University.  I'm sharing a few photos of my school library before the book fair and after.  My library media center is a separate building and was once the cafeteria.  Above, the photo shows the biographies that are housed right inside the main door.

The E for Everybody books are located along the back wall.  The free-standing cases in the middle of the room house chapter books and much of the non-fiction collection.

The 398.2 and 811 collections are large enough to require their own shelving.  There are six computers around the room for students to use Destiny, our online catalog, or to do Internet research.

Our reference area is the focus of year one of our five-year collection development plan.  Common Core has required all of us to take a hard look at our collections in terms of curricular support, and text-complexity and depth of non-fiction and reference holdings.

This is my media cart.  My LCD projector is hooked to a desktop computer with a video splitter.  Because tablet technology is developing so fast, we have decided not to invest in laptop computers, but rather concentrate on getting document cameras, LCD projectors, MobiViews or eBeams for each grade level.  My document camera gets a workout most days because I read to each class that comes for their media special.  I have three classes each day and switch off with our computer teacher.  This leaves the library media center and the computer lab open for three class periods each day for individual teacher sign-up.

The back room of the library media center houses the professional collection, the guided reading collection, many class sets of novels, and videos and DVDs.

For our Scholastic book fair, we roll the free-standing cases to one end of the room and open the fair cases.

PTA volunteers help a class fill out wish lists during their preview of the book fair.  Since I can't teach in the library media center during the book fair, I "take my show on the road" and go to classrooms.

Welcome to my blog, SLIS students!  I look forward to talking with you.