Crayon Resist Quilts

I did this with my first graders at the beginning of the year.  We started off by talking about how to use lines and shapes to create various designs.  We discussed patterns as well, but I didn't push it if they didn't create an "AB"pattern for all the squares.

I gave each student an 8.5"x11" white sheet of paper that already had 12 squares printed on it.  They used a dark color crayon to trace over the lines and then drew small little dashes to give the illusion that the squares are sewn together.

Then, they used different color crayons to come up with their own designs.  I instructed them to push down hard and to not color in the white spaces.  They are not suppose to color in all the white space, because when they are done drawing their designs, they are going to go over each square with watercolor paint.  I demonstrated on a square that is fully colored in so they could see the paint will not stick to the crayons.  Then I showed them an example of the correct way to do this.

After they are done drawing, they painted each square using watercolor paint and put them up to dry.  While they are drying, I had a stack of 12"x18" pieces of white paper with a pillow and mattress printed on it.  They were told to draw a self-portrait of themselves sleeping on their pillow and then to color in their pillow and mattess. 

The next day, when their paintings were dry, we glued our "quilts" onto a 9"x12" colored piece of construction paper.  I then told them we needed to cover our sleeping self-portraits with our quilts, so they glued those down, making sure not to cover their faces!

I had done the crayon resist quilts a few times, but this was my first time adding the sleeping self-portraits.  The students loved it and it was a fun new way to make their paintings more unique!