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| Map work for Gee's Bend, Alabama. |
As part of our preparation for a trip to see the Gee's Bend Quilt exhibit at the Philadelphia Art Museum on Dec. 1, we
did a lot of work in our home classroom and also in the art room. We had two excellent books about the quilts and their makers,
and students saw a brief PowerPoint in the art room that introduced some of the quilts and the women who created them. We
learned about the history of Gee's Bend, from the time in which the residents were slaves, through the Depression and Civil Rights era, up to the present "discovery"
of the quilts by art museums and galleries.
To better understand the special visual qualities of those quilts , we worked with more conventional quilt designs. The first stage involved experimenting with triangular tiles. How many different
shapes could be made from 3, 4, or 5 tiles? Did it matter whether the tiles were equilateral or isosceles triangles? The next
step was focused on finding the areas of different shapes in quilt designs we provided. Triangles, rectangles, hexagons --
all had an area, but how to find it? We worked with dot paper and with Geoboards and rubber bands to figure out some strategies.
We used Geometer's Sketchpad to confirm our ideas.
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| Searching for examples of polygons for our posters. |
In the midst of this work, it became clear that some students were accustomed to thinking only of regular polygons when
they encountered ones that had more than 4 sides. We decided to make posters that would "advertise" everything from triangles
to hexagons in order to expand our students' definitions. Students worked in pairs to create images of their assigned polygon,
define it accurately, discover the sum of its angles, and look for examples of it in magazines and catalogues.
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We continued with quilt design techniques using Sketchpad. Students created and colored a simple block.
Then they made 4-patch blocks from it using rotation, reflection, and translation. These mathematical terms became more
clearly understood as we applied them and used the words over and over. The resulting blocks were different from each
other and showed how new shapes can be created within the quilt as the blocks are pieced together.
| A reflected design -- mirrored across and down. |
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| The block is rotated around each corner. |
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| This is "translation" -- done by sliding the block across and down. |
By the time we went to the museum on December 1, our group was well-prepared to appreciate both the art
and the history. As Anne Brady said to them before we left, Miquon kids are famous among museum guides and docents for
their deep knowledge and good questions. Our class upheld that reputation on this trip, and we were proud of them. The
guide did an excellent job of weaving the history and living conditions with a discussion of the design elements
of the quilts and the students' responses to them. I think the sheer size of the quilts as well as the number of quilts that
we saw through the morning made the greatest impact. The entire experience was highly worthwhile, and we appreciate
the work Anne did to put this trip together for us.
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