Black History Month is as good a time as ever to learn about quilting, and specifically a history of scrap quilts. Scrap quilts are made of scraps- tiny pieces of fabric that are small, maybe oddly shaped and may seem to have little value on their own, but joined together with other scraps, they can tell a story.

Scrap quilts are part of my childhood story in much the same way as The Patchwork Quilt. In this story, a grandmother tells the history of her family by collecting pieces of their beloved clothing, and halloween costumes and joining them together in a quilt. At the end of a long year, the family has a tangible record of the year and themselves, all captured in the quilt. 

The quilt in this picture with the 5th Grade girls sitting on it, is made out of scraps of my own children’s outgrown clothing, stitched together to tell the history of their childhood. The quilt in the foreground was made by my grandmother and her scraps came from discontinued wallpaper books from her local store. She was a factory worker, poor and thrifty, but determined to be creative and make something beautiful with the samples of coordinating curtain fabric she found in those wallpaper books. In each instance, the scraps had meaning and the quilters were resourceful and careful not to waste. 

While we read Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt, we learned that scraps can have even more value and importance. Clara, a young slave, collects fabrics from the Big House where she works as an enslaved seamstress. She saves all of the scraps she can and constructs a map in the form of a quilt. Clara listens to bits of stories from drivers, other slaves who have escaped and been re-captured and anyone else who has traveled in the area that can tell her details of the surrounding countryside beyond the plantation . When the other slaves begin to realize what she is making and why, they stop by to chat with her and give her tips about the Underground Railroad and the safe routes that have been constructed by others toward freedom. Clara listens carefully and sews all of these details into her quilt, marking the fields in green and yellow, with blue waterways and even includes the North Star. Clara herself escapes, using the quilt details to help her to find the route North to freedom. She leaves the quilt behind, hoping it can be used by others who also dare to try and escape.

The 5th Graders had fun listening to the stories and appreciated the history, beauty and power of the scrap quilts.