my mother pieced quilts thesis

WILLA v5 - Piecing It: The Mother-Quilter as Artist and Historian in Teresa Palma Acosta's 'My Mother Pieced Quilts'

Piecing It: The Mother-Quilter as Artist and Historian in Teresa Palma Acosta's "My Mother Pieced Quilts" Angeline Godwin Dvorak The quilt as a historical art form clearly provides a history of its individual creator, usually a woman, but more importantly, the specific details of each quilt's visual narrative link the universal experiences of women, otherwise detached by cultural, social, and economic diversity. As though pulling the tension of the needle through the fabric, the tension in the history that is pieced into the quilter's artform is the universal oppressions of women that have forwarded a patriarchal history, and left diminished or neglected the voice, role and impact of women in world societies. Adrienne Rich's poetry, in closely examining women's textile culture, is pregnant with metaphors which link women, the work of their hands, the institution of history, and patriarchal domination. Elaine Hedges , in her essay, "The Needle or the Pen: The Literary Rediscovery of Women's Textile Work," 1 responding to Rich's "When We Dead Awaken," explains these linkages: From a canvas on which women inscribed a male history separate from their own, or onto which they displaced their anger, dividing themselves from themselves, the textile artifact had become woman's own self-habitation, dark with both suffering and her hidden potentials, the skein her very skin. (350) It is women's isolation, oppression and patriarchally unposed duties that have shadowed their "hidden potential." Some women have survived within and because of the "life" in their textile culture. Like Rich, Alice Walker has also explored the relationship of quilting and sewing and women. In "Writing The Color Purple," Walker notes that these household tasks are also artistic activities. Celie's quilting and sewing directly link her to prior generations of black women, who, though enslaved, oppressed or both, found the needle in their hands an agent to "Psychic survival" and of "Physical, emotional, spiritual, and economic liberation" ( Hedges 354 ). This communion among women who suffer oppression encourages the bonding of all women, from the past to the present. This yoking seems especially powerful for women who are double burdened from both the patriarchal shackling of gender and economic deprivation. Thus, an even more solid link exists, then and now, between such women as the "papered7 female owned within the institution of slavery, the migrant working woman bound by intense poverty and debilitating labor, and the welfare mother trapped in a sociopolitical labyrinth of male-centered economics and politics. Teresa Palma Acosta's poem, "My Mother Pieced Quilts," is a first-person testimonial of a Chicano woman who connects her mother's practical art of quilt making with her personal family and cultural histories. As the narrator discovers the significance of the quilts in her understanding of herself, the familiar bed coverings become portraits and sculptures of family and self, of life and death, of labor and love. Each embodies the history of the family's daily existence as the mother linked their experiences piece-by-piece in the quilt. The mother quilter, as artist and historian, ultimately gives a voice to the quilts; they then become the storytellers. Each tells its story. These stories are not insignificant. They are incidental. Carol P. Christ , in Diving Deep and Surfacing: Women Writers on Spiritual Quest 2 emphasizes the importance of such stories told by women for women: Women's stories have not been told. And without stories there is not articulation of experience, Without stories a woman is lost when she comes to make the important decisions of her life. She does not learn to value her struggles, to celebrate her strengths, to comprehend her pain. Without stories she cannot understand herself. (1) The daughter-narrator, in "My Mother Pieced Quilts," inherits the stories, their songs and their pictures, in the quilts that her mother pieced, It is through the quilt that several complex relationships unfold, to include the central bond between the narrator and her audience, that is, the daughter and her mother. The mother is a quilter, and it is in this role that she becomes the historian and the artist. Through her stories and through her art, the mother translates and preserves her history as a woman as well as the history of their culture. The matrix of roles and relationships further meshes as the mother-quilter embraces them and gives them a voice within the quilt that may "sing on7 for her daughter. So, if we can entertain Tillie Olsen's conclusion that "[m]ost of what has been, is, between mothers, daughters, and in motherhood, in daughterhood, has never been recorded,"(275) then Acosta's poem captures a rare moment. Just as a mother bears a child, the quilter brings life into the form of the quilt-random remnants, shaped and arranged into a solid, functional object. The mother-quilter goes far beyond physically arranging and selecting the pieces of her quilt. She strategically constructs a defense against the elements that threaten her family. As adamantly, she fortresses against the loss of individual culture, as she captures her family's history, designs and shapes an artform, and ultimately, orders lives. As militant protector, maternal nurturer, inspired artist, and family historian, the mother-quilter transforms chaos and preserves culture for her family. Interwoven in this seemingly "natural" task of giving life and throughout all of these roles are the mother-quilter's salvaging, resurrecting and preserving the historical culture of her family and community. In the body of the quilt, the common is married to the individual, the familiar with the unique. The narrator wakes up each day, experiencing this consummation of purpose and aesthetics. Acosta personifies the quilts as living things, perhaps even beings, as the "october ripened canvases" with 'cloth faces" (393) spark the narrator's curiosity. The quilts have matured after long periods of use. The narrator's curiosity also ripens and matures as she begins to wonder how her mother pieced an array of fabrics together, each linked to a place, a time or special event-"gentle communion cotton and ... wedding organdies" (393). This act of piecing things together extends beyond the physical connection of thread to cloth. The mother's piecing involves linking the past, present and future, reconciling the irregular shapes and the clashing patterns and colors, ordering the chaotic, unmatched aspects of everyday life, and synchronizing the emotional revelation of a woman coming to understand and see her mother differently. The narrator observes how she 'shaped patterns square and oblong and round/positioned/ balanced" (393). The mother becomes a creator and a restorer as she, with God-like powers, shapes, positions, balances and forces the fragments of their lives together. Created through Acostas imagery as a militant protector, the mother pieces quilts that "were just meant as cover/in winter/as weapons/against pounding january winds" (393). The narrator describes her mother's tools for quilting as hard and cold which function militantly: "cemented them [the pieces]/with your thread/a steel needle/a thimble ... you were the caravan master at the reins/driving your threaded needle artillery across the mosaic/ cloth bridges" (394). The quilts, like each stitch that creates them, are the mother's means of waging war against the poverty which threatens the well-being of her family. The quilts themselves, she describes, as "armed/ready" (395). The practical purposes of the quilts, "just meant as covers," allows the mother-quilter to function in a traditional role within the family and community structure, fulfilling her mission as nurturer, comforter and provider. Unlike writing a novel, sculpting a statue or composing a song, quilting compliments the patriarchal requisites of the mother-woman. The utilitarian aspect of piecing a quilt overshadows the workings of the quilter's artistic imagination and creativity. The product of utility-a sturdy, warm bedcovering-satisfies any expectations of her duty as mother and caretaker. It is the textile artifact of beauty and expression, however, that replenishes her spirit and rewards "her hidden potential." The narrator compares her mother's careful handling of the quilt pieces to her tucking the children into bed at night: "how the thread darted in and out/galloping along the frayed edges, tucking them in / as you did us at night"(394). The frayed edges of the scraps of materials, saved and salvaged from garments and mill goods, the quilter trims and arranges, neatly joining the smooth edges. Likewise, she soothes her children's fears and prepares them for the sounds and the silence which follow the chaos and the struggle of everyday life for the poor children of migrant workers. In the inevitable insecurities of their temporal lifestyle, with no longterm or permanent residence, the mother's quilts become "security blankets" which are familiar and lasting, almost synonymous with traditional concepts of home, regardless of where people may be. As long as the mother-quilter adequately fulfills the domestic needs of her family, she reduces the risk of interference or criticism as her practical skill poses as a front for her artistic imagination and creativity as they manifest themselves in piecing quilts. Realizing that she is watching an act of creation take place, the narrator compares her mother's quilting to that of an artist preparing to execute her art on the canvas: in the evening you sat at your canvas —our cracked linoleum floor the drawing board me lounging on your arm and you staking out the plan: whether to put the lilac purple of easter against the red plaid of winter-going into spring whether to mix a yellow with blue and white and paint the corpus christi noon when my father held your hand whether to shape a five-point star from the somber black silk you wore to grandmother's funeral. (394) The quilt becomes the canvas; the floor, the drawing board. Here the mother-quilter plans, mixes, matches and blends. The history of the family is concurrently created and artistically drawn for the daughter-narrator, as the tightly stitched scraps of material tie people and places together. The quilts are touchable, living stores of individuals, as the fabrics of Easter dresses and wedding gowns touch each other, forming their lives within a given period of time, within a span of experiences. Glenda Neel Pender , in her poem, "My Grandmother's Gift," reflecting on the role of the quilt as story and the quilter as historian, writes: "My grandmother wrote necessary chore in her role as caretaker and nurturer, and an "allowed" leisure time, a moment of creativity. While the migrant woman shares the oppression of a chapter/of her autobiography/with every squarelof every quilt she ever made" (184). The mother-quilter, too, in "My Mother Pieced Quilts," opens herself up for others to see. It is her daughter's choice to see: ". . . delivering yourself in separate testimonies/oh mother you plunged me sobbing and laughing/into our past" (394). History, by the nature of the discipline, links people, places, times and events. The work of the mother-quilter serves as a historical document of the family, its experiences and its culture. The quilts tell the story of the narrator's cultural milieu as part of a migrant worker family. Acosta weaves the migrant experience throughout the careful inventory of individual pieces. The references to the seasons and the various areas of the country clarify this connection to the regional movements of seasonal crop gathering. Michigan to Santa Fe to Corpus Christi ultimately link to the "crossing at five" of a river at the border. The family's coming across the border initiates a life of hard work and poverty, constantly being uprooted as the harvest of the crops forced the family's following. Their work takes them from the "spinach fields" to the "plainview cotton rows" which suggests that they migrated from produce farms, probably in California and also the Midwest, to the flat lands of Mississippi Delta area where the family picked cotton. Hard labor and hard life offer little comfort to migrant children. Acosta notes the hardships in referring to the "tuberculosis wards" and the "thrashings." The fabrics, their textures and colors, are intricately linked with the seasons which, in turn, reflect the temporary home: "your michigan spring faded curtain pieces / my father's santa fe work shirt / the summer denims, the tweeds of fall ... the lilac purple of easter" (394). Seasonal labor does not provide a substantial income, for indeed, the curtains are faded, for the "dime store velvets" are cheap substitutes that lose their texture quickly, unlike a rich fabric which would hold its beauty. In an essay overflowing with references to works which explore the relationship of women's writing and women's textile culture, Hedges notes how the needle and the pen become almost interchangeable, how one serves as the foil of the other. 3 Pender's poem, noted earlier, also makes this connection: They told the story of her life just as surely as if her needle had been threaded with ink and her beautiful evenly spaced stitche had become words. (184)

Walker, Alice. In Search of Our Mothers' Garden . San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983.

Reference Citation : Dvorak, Angeline Godwin. (1996). "Piecing It: The Mother-Quilter as Artist and Historian in Teresa Palma Acosta's "My Mother Pieced Quilts." WILLA , Volume V, pp. 13-17.

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Analysis of My Mother Pieced Quilts

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Jotted Lines

A Collection Of Essays

My Mother Pieced Quilts – Themes

Kinship/motherhood .

Teresa Palomo Acosta’s poem “My Mother Pieced Quilts” stitches together pieces of memory, history, and tradition to create a poem, much as her mother once stitched together pieces of old dresses, work clothes, and nightgowns to create a quilt. 

In the poem “My Mother Pieced Quilts,” the speaker reflects on images of her mother, as she runs her hand and her eyes over the individual pieces of material that her mother used to create the quilt. The speaker’s first thought is to wonder how her mother made all those random pieces fit together so neatly, how she created such an attractive pattern out of such tiny pieces of worn out cloth. Memories of those individual pieces of cloth—one piece from a white Communion dress, another piece from a black dress worn at a funeral—race through the speaker’s mind along with images of her mother sitting on the floor sewing. In the creation of the quilt, the speaker’s mother has become an intricate part of the quilt. 

The images of the speaker’s mother are not limited to her using a needle and thread. Here, sewing is used as a metaphor: the speaker remembers how her mother used to tuck her into bed, just as her mother tucked the edges of the material under when sewing the pieces of the quilt together. The speaker also uses her mother’s sewing skills to reflect on how adept her mother was at keeping the family together, as if her mother had sewn the family, with all its random needs and wants, into a recognizable as well as utilitarian pattern. 

The speaker also reflects on her mother as an artist with her quilt as a canvas, comparing her skill with materials, colors, and patterns to an artist’s with paint. The speaker also sees the mother as a “river current” and a “caravan master.” Both these images suggest a strong woman who led the family through very tough times, who was not afraid of challenges. The patterns in the quilt conjure up images for the speaker—the mother’s hand is seen in the strong stitches and her needle is the “artillery,” or sword. 

By the end of the poem, the speaker is laughing at the pleasant memories that the quilt has inspired but also “sobbing” when the quilt reminds her of the sadness in both their lives. It is not clear in the poem whether or not the mother is still alive, but it is evident that the quilt will forever remind the speaker of the relationship she shared with her mother. The quilt, like the poem itself, is “knotted with love”—a love that inspired the mother to make the quilt for her daughter and with the deep love the daughter feels for her mother. 

Simplicity and Complexity 

Just as a quilt is made out of simple materials—thread and remnants of old clothing, curtains, and other household materials—so is Acosta’s poem made out of simple things. From the simplicity of her words, to the simplicity of the form and the images, the poem reads, at first glance, like a simple remembrance of a simple act: a mother sewing a quilt. It is only upon closer inspection and reflection that the complexity of Acosta’s poem comes to light. 

The poem begins with the speaker looking at a quilt that her mother gave to her. “They were just meant as covers” begins the poem. Quilts are something utilitarian, something that keeps a family warm in cold weather. The speaker may have used the quilt for a long period of time, thinking of it only as blanket, but eventually the speaker looks at the quilt in a different way. Finally the speaker begins to appreciate something in the quilt; a quality that has been hidden from her for a long time. The poem seems to be a tribute to that something that the speaker finally sees. It is this new awareness of the simple quilt that makes this simple poem take on complexity. 

The quilt for the speaker becomes not only a work of art but also a kind of family album. Pictures of each house that the family lived in, each city where the family worked, each illness and death that the family suffered, all of these complex family photographs are stored in the simple pieces of cloth. Just as the mother took the simple materials of thread and old, faded cloth and worked them into complex patterns, into fantastic images of “a swallow flying,” a “little boy reclining,” “corpus christi noon,” so does Acosta take simple words and create a complex range of emotions as the poem collects power, going from a simple realization of a quilt to the full understanding of her love for her mother. 

Transformation 

The most obvious transformation in this poem is that which takes place at the mother’s hands as she transforms the pieces of collected material into a quilt. But there are other transformations going on in the poem. First there is the transformation that is occurring in the speaker as she realizes the “canvas” of her mother’s work. This is the transformation of a daughter who suddenly sees her mother as more than a mother. She sees her mother as a woman, a woman who had to struggle. She also sees her mother as an artist. 

There is also the transformation of nature in Acosta’s poem, as she mentions “october ripened canvas,” “january winds,” “summer denims,” and the “tweeds of fall.” The seasonal transformations reflect back to the transformations that occurred in the family as the family moved from one city to another, from one job to another, as the family grew and aged. 

Transforming sorrow into something pretty is also another transformation as the speaker comments on how the mother took the “somber black silk you wore to grandmother’s funeral” and turned it into a beautiful “five-point star.” There is also the curious line, “delivering yourself in separate testimonies,” insinuating that the speaker’s mother transformed herself, possibly by demonstrating different strengths, different talents that may have been hidden or overlooked until the occasion called for them. And then there is the final transformation as the speaker’s emotion changes from tears to laughter as she recalls the transitions that the family experienced as they passed from one stage to another in their lives.

Jennifer Smith and Elizabeth Thomason, Poetry for Students: Presenting Analysis, Context, and Criticism on Commonly Studied Poetry, Volume 12, Teresa Palomo Acosta,, Published by Gale Group, 2001.

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Meaning of Teresa Palomo Acosta's "My Mother Pieced Quilts"

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The use of imagery to reflect theme, lesson plan.

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Describe and compare the differing characteristics that distinguish the fiction and non-fiction forms of narrative, poetry, drama, and essay and determine how the form relates to meaning.

Evaluate the impact of diverse cultures and writers on the development and growth of literature.

Examine literature as it reflects traditional and contemporary themes, motifs , universal characters, and genres.

Describe how an author conveys intent and perspective in contemporary and historical writings.

Analyze the way in which a work of literature is related to the themes and issues of its historical period. meaning.

Interpret and analyze works in various genres of literary and/or cultural significance in American and world history that:

•  Reflect a variety of genres in the respective major periods of literature.
•  Represent important authors in each historical period.
•  Reveal contrasts in major themes, styles, and trends in the respective historical periods.
•  Examine the important philosophical, religious, social, political, or ethical ideas of the time.

Analyze the effectiveness of literary elements used by authors in various genres.

• Analyze how authors develop complex characters as well as their roles and functions in a variety of texts.
• Determine the effectiveness of setting as related to character, plot, and other key l iterary elements.
• Determine the effectiveness of the author’s use of point of view as related to content and specific types of genre.
• Analyze how the author structures plot to advance the action.
• Identify major themes in literature, comparing and contrasting how they are developed across genres.
• Explain how voice and choice of speaker (narrator) affect the mood, tone, and meaning of text.
• Describe how an author, through the use of diction, syntax, figurative language, sentence variety, etc., achieves style.

Interpret and analyze the author’s skill in employing literary devices in various genres.

• Identify, explain, and analyze the effect of literary devices (e.g., figurative language, imagery, allegory, and symbolism ).
• Identify, explain and analyze the effects of sound, form, and structure of poems.
• Identify and analyze how dramatic conventions (e.g., stage directions, monologue, dialogue, soliloquy, dialect, chorus) support, interpret, and enhance dramatic script.

Analyzing and interpreting literature—Fiction

Explain, interpret, compare, describe, analyze, and/or evaluate theme in a variety of fiction:

• the relationship between the theme and other components of the text
• comparing and contrasting how major themes are developed across genres
• the reflection of traditional and contemporary issues, themes, motifs, universal characters, and genres
• the way in which a work of literature is related to the themes and issues of its historical period
• Comprehension requires and enhances critical thinking and is constructed through the intentional interaction between reader and text
• Essential content, literary elements and devices inform meaning
• Analyze the impact of societal and cultural influences in texts

Students will learn about sensory imagery and its importance to meaning in fiction. Students will: [IS.6 - Language Function]

analyze imagery in poetry.

interpret and analyze the author’s skill in creating and using imagery.

analyze how imagery relates to theme. [IS.7 - Level 1]

Essential Questions

How does interaction with the text provoke thinking and response?

[IS.1 - Preparation ]

[IS.2 - ELP Standards]

[IS.3 - ELL Students]

Imagery: A word or group of words in a literary work which appeal to one or more of the senses: sight, taste, touch, hearing and smell; figurative language. The use of images serves to intensify the impact of the work. [IS.4 - All Students]

Theme: A topic of discussion or writing; a major idea broad enough to cover the entire scope of a literary work. [IS.5 - All Students]

80–100 minutes/2–2.5 class periods [IS.8 - Struggling Learners]

Prerequisite Skills

[IS.9 - ELL Students]

“My Mother Pieced Quilts” by Teresa Palomo Acosta from Infinite Divisions: An Anthology of Chicana Literature edited by Tey Diana Rebolledo and Eliana S. Rivero. The University of Arizona Press, 1993.  [IS.10 - All Students] “My Mother Pieced Quilts” is rich in visual and tactile imagery and can easily be made accessible to students, since the association of emotions with objects uses the concrete to get at abstract interpretation. The theme is strongly integrated into the choice of images. Other examples with strong sensory images in them include the poems “In a Station of the Metro” by Ezra Pound, “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” by William Wordsworth, and “Goldenrod” by Mary Oliver; the short stories “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner, “Legend of Sleepy Hollow” by Washington Irving, and “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman; the play Macbeth by William Shakespeare; and the novel Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury.

The Scarlet Ibis by Susan Hahn. Northwestern University Press, 2007. [IS.11 - All Students]

“The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” from The Secret Life of Walter Mitty and Other Pieces by John Thurber. Penguin Classics, 2000. [IS.12 - All Students] [IS.13 - ELL Students]

student copies of Imagery Inventory worksheet ( L-L-7-3_ Imagery Inventory_student.doc )

Imagery Inventory teacher copy ( L-L-7-3_ Imagery Inventory_teacher.doc )

student copies of Imagery and Meaning worksheet ( L-L-7-3_ Imagery and Meaning_student.doc )

Imagery and Meaning teacher copy ( L-L-7-3_ Imagery and Meaning_teacher.doc )

Suggested references for quilt images and quilt history:

American Quilts: The Democratic Art, 1780 to 2007 by Robert Shaw. Sterling, 2009.

The Quilt: A History and Celebration of an American Art Form by Elise Schebler Roberts et al. Voyageur Press, 2010.

Related Unit and Lesson Plans

• Interrelationship Between/Among Literary Elements and Devices
• The Relationship Among Character, Plot, and Theme
• Understanding the Relationship of Symbol to Theme

Related Materials & Resources

The possible inclusion of commercial websites below is not an implied endorsement of their products, which are not free, and are not required for this lesson plan.

Formative Assessment

Keep the lesson focus on how imagery reflects theme. Offer feedback through viewing completed worksheets and recording class responses to imagery and theme. Take notes on student participation to monitor whether students comprehend the lesson, and evaluate worksheets to see if earlier concepts need to be reviewed. [IS.24 - All Students]

Use the activities listed under “Extension” to provide opportunities for additional practice as well as suggestions for students who are ready to move beyond the standard.

Suggested Instructional Supports

 For all learners, to collectively address all questions below and in Parts 1 and part 2, considering using a Socratic Seminar to ask and explore all questions, and to focus on identifying textual examples and the literary concepts of this unit.

For information on the Socratic Seminar, see:

http://www.pattan.net/Videos/Browse/Single/?code_name=socratic_seminar

www.paideia.org

For all learners, consider using some type of formalized data gathering system. For example, see:

https://websites.pdesas.org/ralexander/2010/5/26/47179/page.aspx

for an overview of a “flip chart” for formative assessment.

Instructional Procedures

Focus Question: How does language create sensory images?

Say, “Most of us have an object at home that has special meaning for us and perhaps our family. Think of a special object in your home—perhaps a picture, a piece of furniture, a watch or a ring, or a piece of sporting equipment. Why is it special? What memories does it bring to mind?” Explain that inanimate objects can have powerful emotions attached to them.

Say, “These objects have a history, and the history gives them meaning.” Explain that an article doesn’t have to have monetary value to be valuable. If possible, show students a personal item to model appropriate ideas. [IS.14 - All Students]

Introduce imagery by using the following example: “The wisps of fog trailed from the tree like grey ribbons, the edges singed by the glow of the dawning sun.” Write the sentence on the board/interactive whiteboard.  [IS.15 - All Students] Ask students what they see if they close their eyes and picture the image.

Refer to the image written on the board/interactive whiteboard. Ask, “Which senses came into play as you created your mental picture?” Explain that this is an example of imagery, or the use of language that appeals to the five senses. Ask what students can conclude about the setting and what feeling is evoked by the image. Ask, “What is suggested by the words ‘wisps’ and ‘trailed’? Why does the author compare the fog to ‘grey ribbons’? What is happening in the phrase ‘the edges singed by the glow of the dawning sun’?” (There is likely to be variety among the responses.) Say, “Not everyone sees exactly the same thing. The important thing is to focus on the senses and the emotions you feel.”  [IS.16 - ELL Students] Explain that imagery can be one word, a group of words, or a paragraph.

Have students read “My Mother Pieced Quilts.”  [IS.17 - Struggling Learners]   [IS.18 - All Students] You may wish to show an image of a quilt, using the suggested resources in Materials. Ask, “What is your first response to the poem? What do you most remember? What feelings come across through the poem?”

Distribute the Imagery Inventory worksheet ( L-L-7-3_ Imagery Inventory_student.doc ). Tell students to reread the poem and complete the worksheet.  [IS.19 - All Students] Point out that the worksheet has a box for each sense. Say, “As you reread the poem, look for images that correspond to the different senses. When you find an image that appeals to the sense of sight, for example, note that image in the appropriate box. Don’t worry if some boxes are fuller than others or that a box may be empty. Just record the images that jump out at you.” After students have completed their inventories, ask them to discuss their results in small groups and then to underline two or three of the most important images.  [IS.20 - All Students] Note that suggested answers are provided on the teacher copy of the Imagery Inventory ( L-L-7-3_ Imagery Inventory_teacher.doc ).

Project on a computer screen a copy of the Imagery and Meaning student worksheet ( L-L-7-3_ Imagery and Meaning_student.doc ). Note that suggested answers are provided on the teacher copy ( L-L-7-3_ Imagery and Meaning_teacher.doc ). Say, “Now let’s see how the images work together to create meaning.” Ask one group for an image that was underlined and write this on the worksheet. Then ask students what they think of when they see the image. Explain that these are the associations. Write these in the column “Associations.”

After writing a few images and associations, ask if students can see any patterns emerging. For example, say, “The ‘October ripened canvases’ and the ‘faded curtain pieces’ contribute to the idea that the quilts seem worn and well used. Look at these images: the quilts are ‘cemented,’ the mother is a ‘river current/ carrying the roaring notes,’ she is a ‘caravan master’ with ‘needle artillery.’ What is the speaker saying about the mother and the quilts?”  [IS.21 - All Students] Guide students to understand that the meaning of the poem is an accumulation of the meanings of these images. You may need to spend time studying the images and gathering students’ responses. Reiterate that associations have no wrong answers.

Read aloud the last four lines of the poem.  [IS.22 - All Students] Say, “These lines state the poem’s strongest theme. Look at our list of images and associations. What images from this list most strongly support this theme?” Allow students time to discuss the theme in relation to imagery. See if students can “follow the thread” of a mother’s strength and love throughout the poem as expressed in her sewing of the quilts. Say, “The theme is the sum of the poem’s parts. In this case, a series of images clearly lead to the poem’s theme.”

Discuss how a study of images can enhance an understanding of any literary text.  [IS.23 - All Students] Say, “A work may have a series of vivid images, such as this poem, or it may have a single dominant image.” Tell students that authors choose images carefully. Say, “Authors understand the power of imagery. Sometimes a single image is truly worth a thousand words.”

If students need additional practice grasping the abstract concept of imagery, refer to a popular commercial, such as one for an athletic product or a fast-food restaurant. Ask them to identify the company’s logo. Then ask what qualities or emotions are associated with that logo. (Examples: speed, satisfying taste, durability) Explain that an image from a poem or story works in the same way as the logo does.

Note any students who need help choosing images for the Imagery Inventory worksheet, and ask them to state the most important object they remember from the poem. Help them identify the sense most associated with that object.

Review theme, if necessary, to help students relate images to theme. Visually oriented students may benefit from viewing the poem projected on the board/interactive whiteboard. Use a pointer to direct students to images as they appear in the poem. Stop after each one to discuss its emotional significance.

Encourage students to apply their knowledge of imagery to other media, such as film or art. Tell them to think about a dominant image in the work, brainstorm associations to the image, and think about how the image enhances their understanding of the work. Then give students opportunities to create their own images. Tell them to choose one of their favorite places and an object that best represents that place. Remind students to think about the thoughts and feelings they want to evoke in others when they choose their images.

Have students take a sentence with very few details and rewrite it by adding vivid words and details that appeal to the senses.

Ask students to draw an image from a description you read to them.

Give students a simple paragraph such as the following: S/he left home in the morning. S/he walked on the road. With him/her was a pet. The weather was not so good. S/he missed the vehicle for school. While walking further s/he and the pet got lost in the woods. The woods were scary. S/he saw a house. The house looked scary. S/he heard some sounds. S/he went inside the house. There s/he and the pet saw some scary things. They left the house. Scary things followed them. They went through the forest. They finally got home. Then they were safe. Or were they?

Read the story aloud. Explain that this is just the shell of a story and that it could be a much better story by including exact, specific, and sensory details. Have students rewrite the story, keeping every idea from every sentence, but expanding the framework by adding details. Point out that students’ details should be vivid and keep the reader interested.

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"My Mother Pieced Quilts"

10 questions

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No student devices needed.   Know more

What figurative language did the author use the most?

personification

The authors mentions canvases several times. What is she referring to?

an actual canvas

the pieces used for the quilt

a piece of art

Where was the author born?

What does the line "you were the river current" say about how the author feels?

She does not like her mother

She calls her mother a river current because she has no structure

She believes her mother is the driving force of the family

She likes how her mother flows from day to day

Which text evidence proves the line

"oh mother you plunged me sobbing..."?

Stretched out they lay/...knotted with love

galloping along the frayed edges, tucking them in/as you did us at night

in the evening you sat at your canvas/--our cracked linoleum floor the drawing board

somber black silk you wore to grandmother's funeral/...into tuberculosis wards

What lines help prove the theme of this poem?

"knotted with love/ the quilts sing one"

"sewn har and taut to withstand the thrashings of twenty-/five years

but it was just that every morning I awoke to/these october ripened canvases

me lounging on your arm/and you staking out the plan

What was the original purpose of the quilts?

as covers to keep warm in winter

to make sure the family holds onto the memories of their past

to have around the house just in case

The author uses artillery as a metaphor. Why does she choose this word as her comparison?

your were the caravan master at the reins

driving your thread needle artillery across the

She believes in it's strength compared to the strength of the quilt

She believes it is best way to describe her mother

She is actually talking about a weapon and not using a metaphor

She believes that the artillery is her mother-powerful

In the line

sewn hard and taut to withstand the thrashings of twenty-five years

The word taut means:

used with force

pulled tight

ready to use

What does the quilt represent to the author?

Her life story

Her parents story before her

memories of her past

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Smithsonian Voices

From the Smithsonian Museums

NATIONAL MUSEUM OF AMERICAN HISTORY

A Mother’s Day Tribute in Six Objects From American History

Cherish the moms who crafted these items as a show of their love

Leslie Poster

I get the same question around this time every year: Is it Mothers’ Day or Mother’s Day?

I’m an editor, so getting wrapped into these debates is kind of a professional hazard. It’s Mother’s Day, and it has been since President Woodrow Wilson declared it so in 1914 . All major style guides and dictionaries agree (which is really saying something, because they don’t always!). And yet each year, I meet with resistance when I make the correction. Is this not a day for all mothers to celebrate, and as such should we not use the plural possessive?

Want the guidance straight from the holiday’s founder, Anna Jarvis? “ I wanted the possessive singular used ,” she told Children, The Magazine for Parents in 1927, and she was quite serious about it. (For more on Jarvis and her challenges in creating and shaping the holiday, check out Katharine Lane Antolini’s Memorializing Motherhood .)

Indeed, there is something quite singular—forgive the pun—about the relationship between mother and child. Many objects in our collections share stories of maternal bonds. But I find myself most moved by the handmade ones, a mother’s care stitched or glued or knit into objects across time and topic. Here are just a few:

Entertaining Endearments

“Mother’s Day is not for the famous,” Jarvis once wrote. “It is just for tributes and to glorify your humble mother and mine.” You’ve probably never heard of Hilda Hensley and Nancy Flagg, but their handiwork is part of our collections because of the way they supported their famous offspring.

Hilda Hensley made this rhinestone-bedazzled pink suit for Patsy Cline (decades before Tina Knowles designed for Beyoncé, while we’re on the topic of country songstresses). She embroidered the names of her daughter’s hits on each of the applique records that adorn the suit. Ours is one of many that Hensley made for Cline during the Opry star’s celebrated but tragically short career. (Check out this video for more on the suit and on Cline.)

Nancy Flagg’s fashions welcomed millions of television viewers to the neighborhood when worn by her son, Fred Rogers, on the public television hit Mister Rogers' Neighborhood . At the start of each episode, nearly 900 in all, Rogers would swap a blazer for one of the many cozy cardigans in his closet, each knit by his mother.

Blanketed in Love

Geneva Ivey Jackson stitched this quilt in Warren County, Georgia, where she lived all of her 103 years. She raised eight children during the Great Depression as a Black mother in the segregated South. “Me and my husband, we didn’t have a dime,” she told the Spelman Independent Scholars Oral History Project . The front of the quilt combines colorful patches of fabric and thread; the back is made from stitched-together animal feed sacks, inscribed with the phrase “I might not be able to give them much, but I swore they wouldn't be cold.”

This hand-woven blanket was likely made not to keep a body warm in cold weather, but to cover it for burial. The story of the blanket comes to us from a Bureau of Indian Affairs commissioner when the Smithsonian acquired the blanket, who wrote that it was made by a mother in a Diné (Navajo) community in New Mexico. When her son left to fight in World War I, she was sure he wouldn’t survive, so she made this blanket to be placed upon his body should he die in battle. This story has a happy ending, though: he did come home, and the blanket was later auctioned to raise nearly $1,500 for the Red Cross.

Bonnets for Baby

Baby bonnets are undeniably adorable, but for some their purpose is more than aesthetic. Chinese mothers once dressed their little ones in hats made to look like animals, such as tigers or lions, because tradition held that the disguise would help the susceptible child avoid detection by evil spirits. When Lee Ng Shee, a Chinese immigrant in Manhattan, made this hat for her son in 1919, she added fur in two tufts atop the silk cap to give the toddler a more canine countenance.

When Henry Katz was a similar age, albeit 90 years later, he wore this helmet for cranial remolding therapy. About half of children will have flat parts of their skulls (doctors call it plagiocephaly ); some wear an (albeit drab) helmet to reshape their heads. Lauren Telchin Katz, then a project manager at our museum, and her husband decided to dress up the helmet that would help their son. As she shared in a recent text message, “We made a very ugly medical device adorable, no?” These days a teenage Henry is more likely to be seen in a batting helmet, but I still smile every time I see the tiny cap in our collections room.

Grammar debates around the holiday may persist, but one thing’s for certain: if you’ve felt the kind of mother’s love these objects demonstrate, you know it’s a thing worth celebrating.

Leslie Poster is the director of Editorial Services at the National Museum of American History. Her mother can’t sew or knit, but did pass down a talent for spinning a yarn.