KATRINA QUILT

Reflections of Home is a quilt project created by children and their families displaced from Hurricane Katrina.  The many families displaced by Hurricane Katrina have been away from their homes for more than a year.  Reflections of Home is a tangible representation of how families now living in Louisiana and the Washington, D.C. area think of their home – how their homes may have changed, and what memories of home they most cherish. 
 
Reflections of Home is an initiative of Children’s International Art Outreach (CIAO), in partnership with the NeedleChasers.  CIAO contacted D.C. area quilting guilds in June 2006 to see if any were interested in working on this project, and the NeedleChasers volunteered.   

The quilt is made of 15 square fabric drawings, made primarily by children, that express how displaced families feel about their home.  To make the squares, children and adults came to Washington's Sitar Center in early August for a quilt workshop organized by CIAO and the NeedleChasers.  First, they created designs on 8" square pieces of paper using regular markers.  Then they traced their designs onto white fabric with fabric markers.  Finally, they chose the fabrics they wanted to surround their squares from a selection donated by the NeedleChasers.

Additional fabric squares and fabric markers were sent to  families in the New Orleans area.   When the completed New Orleans squares arrived in Washington, the NeedleChasers sewed fabrics around them, pieced all the squares together, added a border to complete the quilt top, and quilted it. 

The last year has been an extremely difficult one for these families.  What's particularly inspiring about the quilt is the extraordinarily positive feelings the children, whose houses were destroyed by Katrina, still have about their homes -- not just the physical structures they lived in, but their friends, neighbors, and community.  These positive memories are echoed by the colorful fabrics they chose to surround their drawings.