Threads of Inspiration: First-Year Students Weave Storytelling Through Collaborative Quilt Design
First Year Seminar reinforced students’ interest in their chosen field and equipped them with the ability to express themselves creatively.
BRISTOL, R.I. – Inside the School of Engineering, Computing, and Construction Management building, a vibrant quilt greets visitors, each square depicting the lives of Harrison Ford, Eugenie Clark, and other influential figures. These personal designs are the result of 15 weeks of in-depth research by first-year students in Professor of Engineering Janet Baldwin’s Hidden Stories Told by Quilts course. Through this collaborative project, students explored how to creatively tell someone’s story through visuals, resulting in a 5-by-3-foot tapestry of inspiration.
Tasked with drawing six different illustrations that described a significant event or accomplishment in each of their selected individuals’ lives, the students delved deep into the person of their choice. Out of those six, one illustration was sewn onto a collaborative quilt, a creation of hidden stories told by cloth and stitches.
“One of the things that history shows is that people would create and keep quilts as a memento,” Baldwin said. “It was important, both in terms of their [physical] survival, but also for their emotional survival.”
Coming from an engineering background, Baldwin set out to interweave mathematics into the class, including geometric concepts like the golden ratio. Students in the class were encouraged to learn about their chosen person and how math can be applied to their designs. Along with mathematics, students learned how to tell stories through graphics with minimal to no words. As part of the learning outcomes of a first-year seminar, they also learned how to work in groups, communication skills, and the value that different perspectives bring to tackling an idea or challenge.
While learning about the importance of quilts as a means of storytelling, students explored their own family history and illustrated a quilt block that told stories of their families’ culture.
Avery Wronski, a first-year Marine Biology major with minors in Educational Studies and Journalism from Abington, Mass., enjoyed learning about how people used quilting as an art form to share their experiences and culture.
“Stories that are told through quilts are very meaningful and can hold a lot of value to different people and cultures. They can be used to symbolize big movements or the journeys one has had in life,” the first-generation college student said. “Quilts can preserve a culture or even symbolize it by telling stories and traditions across the many blocks.”
For Natalia Kamen, a first-year Aquaculture and Aquarium Science major from Lagrangeville, N.Y., the class influenced how she will approach situations around her and develop solutions.
“This class will help me to look at problems from different angles, and explore all aspects before jumping to conclusions,” Kamen said. “I learned that quilting has been passed down through generations and that its pictures are worth a thousand words.”