Valerie Russell
Once Apon a Fable Origami Quilt
By: Josefine Striepen, Ivey Brackett, Deanna Howard, Kimberly Shumaker, and Analisa Boza
We started with the idea of making a quilt out of nursery rhymes and fables. After brainstorming different fables that could be transferred into a quilt, we decided on three different fables: The Cow Jumped Over the Moon, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and The Three Little Pigs. We knew we had to incorporate origami into the quilt so we decided on four different types of origami: origami stars, three different types of houses, and an origami cow and pig.
On the bottom of the quilt, which contains The Three Little Pigs, the house made of sticks (or the middle house) is the midpoint of the line going from the outside edge of the third house to the outside edge of the first house. The same is for the pigs; the middle pig is the midpoint of the line going from the outer edge of the first pig to the outer edge of the third pig. We have several shapes in our houses, such as trapezoids, triangles, squares, rectangles, and other shapes. The perimeter of the first house (the straw house) is 16 inches. The perimeter of the second house (the stick house) is 25. 5 inches. The perimeter of the third house (the brick house) is 21 inches. This first part of the quilt was used to show what we did in class involving line segments, midpoints and distance.
In the top, right part of the quilt, which contains Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, the stars are in the shape of a parallelogram. The opposite sides are the same distance and parallel. The shortest sides of the shape are about 7 inches and the longest sides are about 8 ½ inches. Each star is an origami star and a quadrilateral. The angle bisectors of the shape are 13 inches long and 9 inches long. The angle bisectors bisect each other in the middle and make a perpendicular intersection. The total perimeter of the parallelogram is 31 inches. Each star has a perimeter of 15 inches ad there are four stars total. This part of the quilt we chose to represent our work with shapes and area, perimeter, angle bisectors etc.
In the top, left corner of the quilt, which contains The Cow Jumped Over the Moon, the diameter of the moon is 7.5, and the radius is 3.75. With this information we used the area formula to get 14.06 as the area of the moon. The circumference of the moon is 23. 5 inches. The perimeter of The Cow Jumping Over the Moon is 17. 5 inches. We decided to use this part of the quilt to reflect what we learned involving circles.
After we finished working on the quilt, we realized that connecting math with arts can help you understand how math relates with the real world. We all enjoyed working on this quilt and used mostly team work and afterschool work to complete it. This was a very helpful experience in that we saw the connections math has with many everyday activities and can be used in many ways throughout life.