About the Quilt
In the spring of 2022, lower school librarians Kate and Hannah began to think about summer reading. What can we do, they thought, that would encourage individual reading and creativity, while also providing an opportunity for a community experience? Because all the GFS librarians love to sew, the answer came quickly: a summer reading quilt! Little did they know that it would turn into 3.5 quilts…
In late spring, librarians distributed envelopes to all interested students. The envelopes contained a square of muslin fabric, a few scraps of other fun accent fabrics, and an instruction sheet. The rest was up to them.
In early September, we hosted a summer reading celebration where students could return their quilt patches. And return them they did! Over the next few weeks, we received one hundred and one (yes, 101!) quilt patches, created by students ranging from early childhood through incoming sixth graders.
The patches were full of creativity, passion, and love. They were also full of amazing materials like glitter and pom poms and straws and pipe cleaners and staples and paper and yarn and beads and much, much more! After many trips across Germantown Avenue to Gaffney’s Fabrics and months of sewing, the quilts began to come together.
Then, a stroke of luck! In late fall we discovered that web developer extraordinaire Nafisa Martey was looking for a Junior Project. Over the course of a month, Nafisa has photographed each individual quilt patch, typed up the artists’ reflections, and designed and created this entire website!
We invite you to visit the Quilts page, where you can explore each quilt in more depth, see close-up photographs of each patch, and read the information each artist provided about their book and their patch. You can also use the search function to find an individual student or a specific book title. Give it a try! We hope you enjoy!
Questions? Comments? Contact us!!