Nancy Yule, a parent at Highland Public School in Cambridge, was grateful for the opportunity for her child to participate in the Strong Start® Project and wanted to show her appreciation for the program and the difference it made for her child. Working with the Principal and staff, Nancy used her skills as an award-winning quilter to create a lasting work of art to demonstrate the importance of literacy.
This was a mammoth project! It began with the students at Highland making a “picture” representation of what reading and literacy means to them (e.g. how they feel when they read their favourite book or how it feels when a special person reads to them). Each class submitted a representative picture.
The pictures were then transferred, via an elaborate and laborious process, to fabric quilt blocks. The blocks were incorporated into a beautiful quilt (approx. 70 x 90 inches) with hand-stitched, beaded stars sprinkled throughout. Tracings of hands help tell the story. The 24 stars on this quilt, alone, took about 12 hours to stitch! A lot of work and a lot of love went into this quilt.
Nancy’s named her work of art “Stitching To Read – A Quilt For Literacy”. Highland P. S. sold tickets on the quilt to raise both awareness of the importance of literacy and to generate funds for Strong Start®. An extra bonus came when the winner gave the quilt back to the school so that it could be permanently displayed.
Nancy’s motivation and her message centres on “giving”. Strong Start® Volunteers gave to her child, reading gives a person a rich life and Nancy found a way to give back.