Tilden Hogge Elementary School Quilting Project

Tilden Hogge

Elementary School

Quilting in the

Curriculum Project

The Tilden Hogge Elementary School in Morehead, Kentucky in cooperation with the Rowan County Foothills Quilt Trail and The Sheltowee Environmental Education Coalition is developing an exemplary project demonstrating how the art of quilting can be incorporated into the curriculum of an elementary school. See above quilt square painted by the students of Tilden Hogge.

Principal Debbie Howes is chairing this project and working with other public and private schools to develop the resources and tools to complete this program.

This project is funded by a grant from The Lucille Caudill Little Foundation to the Foothills Quilt Trail through the Sheltowee Environmental Education Coalition .

Tilden Hogge Elementary has been piecing together a new relationship with quilts for its students this year. Thanks to a grant opportunity made possible by Little Foundation the students at THE are becoming more involved with the quilting tradition.

Quilt Club takes place after school on Thursdays. Every club member helps in setting up, tacking, and hemming his/her own ‘lap’ sized quilt. That means a total of twelve quilts just for club members! Club members have also constructed several wallhangings, almost one for each school month!! In September they made a wallhanging with the school’s Quilt Trails Block pattern “Friendship Star” for the Cranston/Route 377 Volunteer Fire Department. It produces over $100 in a raffle for their fundraiser. In October, PTO used a “Halloween” Quilt presented by the Quilt Club for a money-making raffle at their annual “Chili Cookoff/Fall Fling”. For the Veteran’s Day Program in November a quilt was made to be drawn for by one of our visiting veterans. PTO received another quilt for raffle at the Christmas Program. During January and February, the Quilt club project was a wallhanging for their friends at Jinbao Primary School in China.

In addition to making quilts, the Tilden Hogge students are also reading more about quilts. The library has added several new books with a quilting theme to our collection: Pieces: A Year in Poems and Quilts; Stitching Stars: The Story Quilts of Harriet Powers; The Patchwork Quilt; The Coffin Quilt: The Feud Between the Hatfields and the McCoys, and Eight Hands Round—A Patchwork Alphabet. The books cross a variety of genre as well as age groups in order to offer “something for everyone.”

The quilt also plays a role in the classroom. Since quilts are intrinsically mathematical in nature, they lend themselves easily to lessons in math, particularly the “hands-on” Investigations Math lessons. Ms. Mason’s K/1 students produced beautiful quilt patterns in their math lesson. They are also a wonderful way to display “blocks” of time as in the African American Biography Quilt project from Vivian Clark’s 2^nd/3^rd grade classroom.

Quilt pattern pages will be complied into a quilt banner by Quilt Club members in 4th and 5th grades.

Quilt Club will meet after school on Thursdays from 3:30 t0 4:30 (quilt club curriculum will include History of Quilting, History of Quilt Patterns, and Quilting Instruction). Local quilters will be asked to bring examples of their quilts and tell about their personal quilting history. Quilt Club members will journal their weekly experiences.

Evening quilt class for adults and student members of the quilt club and others. This can be offered in partnership with FRYSCK on Reading Night.

Reading/Activity Night with a quilting theme. Quilting demonstrations and hands-on activities for parents and children. Quilt book available to read or read to students.

Teachers will be provided a folder of quilt lesson plans related to math, history, art, language arts, and social studies. Lessons include pretest/posttest.

Each teacher will be asked to use one book about quilting for a Language Arts lesson: Incentive– Teacher receives classroom copy of book.

Gifted and Talented class lesson during African American Month The African American Experience: A Research Quilt.

Debbie Howes, Principal
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Tilden Hogge Elementary School
5955 Cranston Road
Morehead, KY 40351