Pinkiris

Best of luck with your generous venture! It will be interesting to hear how many of your students take to quilting and want to continue. Bless you for donating your time.

sewingsuz

This is such a great thing you have offered to do. Most children and adults, do not know what goes into making a quilt. Bless You.

PlanoDebbie

If none of these kids have every used a sewing machine, I would have them just putting alternating blocks together. For my daughter's girl scout Silver award I taught our girls how to quilt as well. My girls were in 9th grade. Some of them had a tough time trying to sew a straight line, much less a consistent seam allowance. Each girl pieced together 2 baby quilts that we were able to donate to mom's at a public hospital. While the girls did the piecing, I quilted each of them and did the binding on them.

Before having the kids start stitching directly on fabric, you may want to draw some lines onto blank paper and have them trying to stitch along the lines without thread. That will help them get the feel for how fast or slow they need to sew.

justflyingin

I agree. Find fun fabrics if possible. Do a simple checkerboard or Rail fence, as someone suggested. If they've sewn before, a simple 9 patch would be great. Don't try to go too fancy because a poorly constructed fancy quilt doesn't look as good as a simple 2 patch which is better done.

And anyway, if you have "interesting" fabrics, that is what the kids care about--not the actual design. At least that has been my experience.

Yesterday I had a 6 yo ask for the puppies because that is what she saw on the fabric. The design was a simple "donation quilt style" (if there is such a term). Have you seen something like this?

[ATTACH=CONFIG]456304[/ATTACH]

This wasn't the same quilt she chose, but this was the pattern. I originally found it the pattern here:

http://www.maryquilts.com/quick-strippie/

sewbern

Here is a suggestion that might be worth a try: if you or the school contacts mountain mist, or Hobbs or other batting companies they might donate free batting. if you contact moda or other fabric manufactures they might donate fabric, and thread companies might supply thread. Keep your projects small and easy so that the students will be able to complete their items. Good luck and have lots of fun!

ScubaK

I'm hoping some Long Armers can join in donating...I only have a small domestic on a frame and quilt for a few charities...it doesn't take much time..
K

youngduncan

I taught a quilting class to girls in grades 4 - 6 at a gifted and talented center. We met once a week for two and a half hours -- nine times during the semester. Every one of the girls finished a quilt which was hers to keep, but we made several which hung on the center's walls for about five years. We used fabric crayons on squares (which I set), then used a sheet for backing, and tied the whole thing with knitting yarn. I was given the use of several cast-off sewing machines from the high school's home economics department.

When it came time for their individual quilts, the girls chose patterns which contained squares and very few triangles. We carefully cut all the block pieces before we began any sewing. I put matching pieces into sandwich bags and labeled them. We practiced sewing using copy paper with straight lines drawn on and worked without using thread in the machines. The girls got pretty good.

Then we moved to fabric with thread. I wish you could have seen the "one-quarter-inch" seams! Some of them actually measured about one inch! I spent quite a bit of time after school taking blocks apart and resewing them.

The girls all had something truly special to keep when the class was over. The next semester, I had more students who wanted to take the class than I had room for. There were even boys who thought the class would be cool! As it turned out, I had a very understanding principal who allowed me to do two sessions of the class, so I was able to accommodate twenty-four eager young quilters instead of the usual twelve.

Your upcoming very worthwhile endeavor makes me miss the thrill of getting young people into such a wonderful hobby.

cynicalbeauty

My first quilt was a rail fence that I made in a class. It is a really simple pattern. My seams were so crooked but the quilt still went together and it looked really good when I finished. You could not tell how bad my seams were. So that would be my suggestion for a pattern As far as supplies, I taught a sewing class at a local non-profit for a while and we asked the community for donations. We got so much fabric and batting that we couldn't even use it all. We made up flyers lissting the items we were looking for and posted them whereever people would let us. There is a site called Freecycle that is used for recycling items. You can put up things you want to donate or things that you need as well. It is organized by city. I only used it once, to donate clothes, but it was a good experience

Gerbie

Karen have you thought about doing a jelly roll quilt, that would be an easy one for beginners. You might also check out the new tutorial that Missouri Star Quilts has out on the disappearing pinwheel, since you are thinking about doing a DSP9, I know Jenny is using layer cakes in this, but you can cut your own, since they are 10"x10". Missouri Star has a lot of quick and easy tutorials, on You Tube.
Your new endeavor sounds so exciting, I wish I lived near by and could give you a helping hand- I am a retired teacher and this would be so much fun- however I live tooo far away- as I live in Texas. If you have a local or an area quilting group perhaps some of the ladies might want to give you a hand to help some of the students with their cutting or sewing. As others have suggested, advertise with your local merchants Wal Mart or any other business for donations of supplies or monetary donations to purchase supplies. Please show us pictures and keep us updated on this exciting project. Don't forget to have your students label their quilts.

Kris P

Karen, what a great mission project you've taken on.
I looked up the weather in Haiti for December and January, and the lowest low temp I found was 66 degrees. Perhaps the quilts you send to Haiti should have a layer of flannel in the middle instead of batting. The quilts staying in MN will need batting, but the quilts for the warmer climate may be more useful with just the flannel. Perhaps someone from a warmer climate will chime in on this.

I wonder if you were to go to a sewing machine dealer that accepts trade ins, if you could 'borrow' or rent a bunch of their older machines that they take on trade ins. My guess is that many of those older machines get donated to overseas charities, so making a pit stop at your charity event may be feasible. Just a thought.

Another easy quilt is Warm Wishes. It alternates large squares with basically rails. The girls can strip piece, and then cut the rails, which will be quick and easy.

Best of luck with your endeavor.
Blessings,
Kris