I now know what it feels like to be in the U.S Senate.

Presenting the first half of the lesson was easy. All I did was open the door into the world of sewing and binding, and I saw little bodies upright on the carpet. One of my goals was to make sure the class understood the deeper meaning of quilts--how they are as much utilitarian and artwork as they are political and spiritual. I also hoped everyone would feel a connection to the quilters themselves, especially since we were about to embark on the design of our own quilt.

"What kind of feeling would you like our quilt to give to its owner?" I said.

It was a softball. Everyone's hand shot up.

"Happiness!"

"Love!"

"Excitement!"

Even the teacher got into it by suggesting peace.

This was a cinch. The class had brainstormed a good list of positive emotions and now they needed to simply choose one of them. I took a vote.

Hands shot up and down as kids changed their mind. I tried again, but I got different hands and double-votes and abstentions. After the third round, I gave up. No problem. I wrote the three most popular emotions on the top of the flip chart paper: love, joy, happiness.

I moved on. I told the class we needed to choose one symbol for our quilt.

The boys wanted an explosion of stars to symbolize joy.

The girls wanted a giant heart in the middle to symbolize love.

Again, I took a vote. This time, the class was neatly divided; it was a stand-off between the boys and the girls. I tried again, but nobody budged. I had no choice (besides, I only had ten minutes), so I announced our quilt would have both symbols.

But then the class had differing opinions as to whether love travels up through the body or simply floats in the air like that delicious flutter in the chest. I'm no fool; I had been down this road before, so I tried the art of compromise.

"Do you think love does both? How can we make it look like the heart is floating? With wings?" I said.

"Wings! Wings!" the kids said.

Nobody gave any other suggestions, so I drew wings on the heart. That was easy.

"And then to make love travel upward, can we add some hearts to the stars?" I said. I drew a couple of small hearts below.

The girls looked smug, but the boys furrowed their brows. They were unhappy that hearts mingled in their star explosion. Okay, scratch that. I scribbled out the exploding hearts and saw shoulders relax.

I had five minutes, so I moved onto the quilt's slogan.

"What short message do we want to say with our quilt?" I said.

Hands shot up, but whenever I pointed to the kids to speak, they lost their train of thought. I could tell they wanted to say something profound but didn't yet know how to do it. It was like a dog chasing its tail: angst trying to channel angst. I thought it was cute.

However, I did receive a few suggestions, and I wrote them on the flip chart paper:

Be happy.
Exploding love.
I love life.
I love light.

Then it was time to wrap up. I told the class to think about the quilt's slogan, and we would revisit it later. I was pleased with what we had accomplished in 15 minutes. And just as I was about to pull our design off the easel and roll it into a tube, a hand shot up in the back of the carpet. I looked over to see a boy wrinkle his nose.

"Why does it have to be so girly?" he said.

"Girly?" I said. I feigned ignorance (after all, our quilt had a giant heart in the middle, and I wasn't about to admit it).

Two other boys scrunched up their faces and eyeballed me. They didn't trust this quilt.

My son sat in the back of the carpet with them. Possibly in an effort to save me or maybe just to get the design officially completed, he whispered about the teacher's lesson on magical phrases, free verse and how anything goes and it doesn't really matter. The dissenters didn't look convinced (but parents, please, please, pretty please, just use it).

And that's the story of how our quilt began to grow roots. And how a group of second-graders worked (somewhat) together to make it look just like this: