Q is for Quilting with Paper and Paint - A to Z April Challenge

Both Sophia and Olivia have sewn quite a few quilts during their young lives. Their beds and closets have the quilts that they can use now and when they are older.

Not only do they show their sewing skills, but they contain memories of time we spent together selecting the fabric (sometimes on vacations which help recall those memories as well); cutting the pieces; sewing the fabric together to create quilt tops; and then sewing all the components together (quilt top, batting, and quilt bottom).

Rather than sew more quilts, we decided to create paper quilts based on a pin on Pinterest that I saw. The pin led to Painted Paper on Flickr and showed how colored paper could be transformed into beautiful designs that look like quilts.

Sophia's paper quilt.

This creative activity also ties into math in that it is a great lesson about symmetry and fractions.

The first step was to select the colors of paper for the background and shapes.

Olivia chose bright blue for her background paper.

She is folding the paper into quarters here.

The background paper is folded into fourths.

Sophia folding her paper into fourths.

The other colors are cut into shapes squares and circles of various sizes.

Olivia and Sophia cutting the circles 

out of colorful paper.

Then, the squares and circles are folded in half or fourths to create smaller shapes - like triangles, semi-circles, and pie-shaped pieces.

Next comes the fun part. The girls symmetrically arranged the shapes onto the background paper.

Olivia arranging and gluing shapes in place.

Once they were satisfied with their designs, they glued the pieces in place.

Sophia arranging her pieces in each quadrant.

The paper quilt projects was easy and fun to do.

Olivia with her finished paper quilt.

It is one that could easily be done many times in the future with different results each time.