The All-Together Quilt

August 15, 2020
Community is at the heart of crafting a quilt for peace. People of all ages, colors, sizes, and levels of expertise gather together on Fridays. Working in intergenerational pairs, they choose fabrics and shapes and decide on arrangement. The children participate fully: drawing, pinning, and sewing pieces together, under close supervision. The fabric patterns are bright, colorful, and diverse, just like the quilters themselves. The illustrations weave together the group's activities with instructions for creating a quilt--even showing a gallery of the quilting pairs set inside stitched squares. One woman of color draws a large, striped peace symbol on a blue square, which eventually becomes the quilt's centerpiece. The friends paint their hands and create a one-of-a-kind border that hugs this community treasure. As they gather weekly to stitch and talk, the grown-ups teach the children and the quilt grows and grows. When the quilt is completed, readers see the whole multicultural, beautiful community, full of pride and joy at the work they have done together. Rockwell's illustrations are eye-catching and hopeful, varying layouts to control pacing but including lots of small squares. Extensive backmatter includes the real quilt this story is based on and explanations of various quilting and fabric designs. (This book was reviewed digitally with 10-by-20-inch double-page spreads viewed at actual size.) When people teach, share, and create together, a treasure is born. (Picture book. 4-8)

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September 1, 2020

K-Gr 4-Rockwell, the founder and artistic director of the cooperative community quilting group Peace by Piece: The Norwalk Community Quilt Project, offers a heartwarming and informative picture book inspired by her personal experience. The book centers on a group of people from different generations and ethnicities, who join together to create a work of art to hang in the library. The text provides a step-by-step process of quilting, from picking out the colorful fabrics for each square to crafting a border of handprints to surround the quilt. Vibrant illustrations rendered in pencil and gouache depict the process of designing, sewing the pieces together, and stitching the layers. Rockwell includes layouts that showcase the many activities happening in the workroom as well as cutouts that explain the specific stages in the quilting process. The joy derived from working together to make something beautiful shines throughout the narrative. A chart of nine classic quilt blocks could be a handy resource. There is also a detailed list of the globally sourced fabrics that were used in the quilt. VERDICT A great purchase for all libraries. Though fictionalized, the story depicts an inspirational vision that spotlights the fruitful results of creative community collaboration. A solid resource to use as the basis for a multigenerational maker project.-Theresa Muraski, Univ. of Wisconsin-Stevens Point Lib.

Copyright 2020 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 1, 2020
Grades K-3 On Fridays, Jennifer sees her friends at the community center. Each child-and-adult pair works on a quilt square: choosing fabrics, cutting geometric shapes, and arranging, pinning, and sewing them into a square. To create a colorful border, each person places a painted hand on a strip of white cloth. After the paint has dried, the squares and the white border are sewn together into a patchwork top. More layers are added. All the friends gather with needles and thread, stitching through the layers to create a beautiful finished quilt. In the closing scene, it adorns a library wall. The amiable, lightly fictionalized text guides viewers through the quilt-making process. Created with watercolor, ink, and scans of fabric, the cheerful illustrations offer inviting views of the quilters, who are diverse in age and ethnicity. In the backmatter, Rockwell displays classic quilt blocks, comments on fabrics used in the illustrations, and introduces a quilt-making program she started in her community, which inspired this picture book. A unique introduction to the pleasures of quilt-making, intergenerational friendships, and shared creative experiences.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)