Faith Ringgold's Flag Story Quilts

Faith Ringgold is a famous African-American, female artist who grew up in Harlem, New York.  Her artwork is inspired both by her memories of helping her mother sew and craft as well as her experiences with painting in college.  Faith Ringgold combines sewing, painting, and text to create beautiful "Story Quilts."  One of her artworks, titles "Flag Story Quilt," combines vivd textiles in red, with newspaper clippings to create an abstract version of the American flag.  Here is Faith Ringgold's "Flag Story Quilt."

In this lesson, students created their very own flag story quilt by building a flag collage.  Students cut out paper from magazines, patterned paper, and plain paper.  They glued down their stripes to create the basic flag design and finished of their flags by adding abstract shapes to represent the stars.  Here is a student example of the flag story quilt: