Students’ Quilt Chosen for Museum Exhibit

A colorful quilt made by students at the Held Enrichment School for Academics and Arts went on display Wednesday at UCLA’s Fowler Museum of Cultural History.

The “friendship quilt” is part of a six-week exhibition that showcases 14 quilts chosen during the museum’s annual “Class Quilts, LA” competition.

The 3-by-5-foot quilt was created by 23 students from 8 to 11 years old.

Each child contributed an amoeba-shaped piece, done with watercolors or pastels, that was then sewn to the black background. The puzzle-like scenery shows children jumping rope, playing basketball and wiggling inside Hula-Hoops.

“It had to focus on themselves interacting with a friend,” said teacher Candace Buckman. “The quilt communicates that pretty successfully.”

Students worked on the quilt for a month, wrote related poems and performed role-playing exercises in a yearlong “friendship unit” at the private preschool-elementary school in Tarzana.

Sewing the quilt in groups taught the children communication and problem-solving skills, Buckman said.

“If the kids can say at the end of the year that they have two or three new friends, we’ve been successful,” Buckman said.

The quilt breaks the mold of the traditional quilt composed of square shapes, said Betsy D. Quick, Fowler’s director of education.

“It’s children telling their own story,” she said.

Ronni Kopulsky, whose 9-year-old son, Craig, helped make the quilt, bought it for $350 in May at a school fund-raising auction. The creation will hang in their home after it leaves the Fowler Museum.