You might have noticed that the big blue square recently disappeared from our quilt. It was a marker of sorts, the space where the giant heart was supposed to go.
Yes, that's past-tense.
After pinning on the stars, I looked at that quilt forward, backward, and sideways, and I faced the fact that a giant heart placed in the middle would ruin everything. Kids are so good at mixing paint on surfaces until everything turns grey, coloring over drawings again and again until the lines disappear, gluing piles of beads and bobs onto thick paper until it becomes soggy and sags. With a giant heart in the middle of our quilt, the lily would definitely be gilded. It was time to stop.
But I had to convince the class of this. So I used my fourth classroom visit to have a serious discussion with the kids.
When I first arrived, I unfolded the quilt and revealed the smattering of stars. The kids
oohed and
aaahed (the stars have a thing going on; they are noticeably cool), but when I brought up the removal of the heart, I saw grimaces. I tried to explain about visual flow, about learning when to stop, about how overworking our quilt might erode its unique quality. The verbal acrobatics didn't work, so I went with the next best thing that all second-graders understand: I took a vote.
This time, the heart did not divide along gender lines. While most of the pro-heart contingent were indeed girls, there were also a few boys--including the one who had called the quilt "too girly" and his dissenter friend. Unbelievable.
That's when I realized that these fickle little pickles didn't need my commentary and arguments. What felt critical today, might be insignificant tomorrow. Thankfully, the anti-heart camp won by four votes, so I didn't have to make the final decision on my own.
Several hours later, I took a seam ripper to that blue panel in the middle of our quilt. I forced the thread to break and blew away the annoying little bits that always wind up in my hair and on my clothes. I watched the seams relax and fall apart. Regardless of tearing away fabric and an unworkable idea, the true heart of our quilt remains. And that's all that matters.
