American Artists - Harriet Powers

We are currently working through Great American Artists for Kids while we are studying American History this year. Each week we take one artist and learn about his/her life, works of art, and then try to create our own art work. This week's artist was Harriet Powers - a quilter of picture quilts. Her quilts told a story. I love quilting so this artist was definitely one of my favorites!

I found a book about Harriet Powers from the library. We read about her life and her quilts. J loved looking at all of them. I kept emphasizing the simplicity of her patterns.

J wrote a notebook page for Harriet Powers and added it to her art notebook.

She wrote an artist card for our artist wall. It seems our composer wall is lacking but our artists are doing well.

Here is a picture of our artist wall. We had to move it out of baby's reach. He was bending all of our cards and such. We couldn't have that!

J added Harriet Powers to our timeline.

The project suggested in the book was somewhat different. I thought it would be good for J to create her own quilt square based on a Bible story. Here, J is working on her plan. We discussed simplicity (again). I didn't want her to create a plan for something she was going to loose steam over quilting!

We went shopping for fabric. The very day we learned about Harriet Powers, I received a coupon on my phone for JoAnn's. Yay! We went shopping and I allowed her to pick out all of her fabrics and such. The next day, J ironed out the creases int he fabric. (Now, typically, if you are a quilter, you would wash the fabrics before all of this. But I decided this square wasn't going to be washed regularly so we skipped this step.)

This is the finished square (rectangle) with all of her pieces fused on. She will be sewing the pieces as well as quilting in the same step. Again, I didn't want her to get bored of the project so I simplified it. Her Bible quilt is the story of David and Goliath, in case you can't tell. She will add a button as a rock onto the top of it.

J is sewing her Bible story quilt. I love how she chose with fabric for David and Blacks for Goliath. Pretty cool. She worked on this quilt all week as well as other projects. She made a snowman for me. She asked her friend what they wanted her to make. I may have unleashed a sewing monster :)

Links

Georgia Encyclopedia - has some basic information on Harriet Powers as well as a great photo of one of her quilts.

Museum of Fine Arts Boston - great picture of another of Harriet Powers bible quilts.

My Hero - Harriet Powers, my hero project, another site with some information about her and her quilts,

Art Threads - more information and more pictures of her inspiring quilts.

Tolerance Website - has a lesson idea called Stitching It Together complete with mini unit to download.

Smithsonian National Museum of American History - has a few more pictures of her quilts and some information.