Have you ever heard the saying « a picture is worth a thousand words? » Well, the same applies to quilts. Back in the days of the Crusades, quilts were not only a beautiful piece of art, but a way of telling stories. Many quilts used symbols to symbolize something of a deeper meaning to help tell the story. Stories sometimes told legends or myths containing an important moral, which at the time, stories were how many people learned new things.

Now, although I may sound a bit like a boring school teacher at the moment, let’s go over a quick recap of the Crusades. The Crusades were basically a series of religious wars where nights and men alike fought to reclaim what the each army thought was rightfully theirs, the holy land of Jerusalem. The Christians sent armies and knights and men to go fight and bring back Jerusalem. To the right is a map of the travel route people took to get to the war. Judging by the distance people had to walk (remember, they didn’t have cars) the Christians must have really wanted to win back their holy land!

It began with the fall of Ancient Rome back in around the 15th century. Once Rome fell, trade began to occur. Because of all the trading that was caused by so many people traveling, towns began to form. This created a convient stop for travelers to rest as well as a one stop shop to buy and sell goods. To show how Trade led to towns during the Crusade times, I created this short comic. Click on the picture below to view! ⤵️

Basicaly what the comic is saying is that towns were formed because it was so much easier for people to live right where they needed to be in order to get what they need. This helped civilization thrive as people were where the resources were.

As towns developed, a society known as Feudalism began to grow in what is now known as Western Europe. Feudalism, as many societies were back then, used the idea of ranks. This meant that people were ranked more or less important than another according to what they did. For example, merchants were ranked lower than priests because priests were the ones with direct contact with God. Feudalism was based off of the 3 F:

Fief: Land

Fealty: Loyalty

Faith: Belief

These three main points were the base of Feudalism.

Ok, now that we’ve briefly covered what the Crusades were and how Trade led to towns during the time, let’s get back to how quilts can tell a story. To begin this topic, we learned what a myth and legend are. This helps to explain the story I will describe in my quilt later. Anyways, a myth, as is a legend, is a type of story that is usually passed down from generation to generation. Most myths contain a certain hero that may have some kind of supernatural power. During this lesson in class, we discussed and read different legends and myths such as the Legend of Robin Hood. Consider this portion of the unit “story writing class”. As a take away from this class, we learned that all stories had a certain flow to how they were written. This, we then learned, is called the Heroes Journey. Below I’ve attached a short video explaining exactly what the Heroes Journey is. You might even think of certain movies or stories that come to mind when watching! ⤵️

Any movies or books come to mind that follow this cycle? Hopefully the video helped explain the cycle to you. If you didn’t watch the video or happened to not fully understand what the Heroes Journey is, let me do just a quick recap. Most people know the story of Harry Potter. Well, like most heroes, he started out as an ordinary boy. However, he gets called into the Wizarding World by Hagrid. This is described as the CALL TO ADVENTURE. He then receives ASSISTANCE  from his friends, Ron and Hermione and guidance from Dumbledore. Fast forwarding through like five or so books, Harry has all these small battles or otherwise known as TRIALS and APPROACH. As you get to the Deathly Hallows book and Harry dies from defeating Voldemort, this is known as the CRISIS or the hero’s time of most need. He then gets REBORN and defeats Voldemort at the CLIMAX before RETURNING HOME. Below is the layout of the hero’s journey planner for the legend my group and I were to create. ⤵️

Quilt Blocks Planner 3-113kldy

Now it’s time to get quilting! Once we learned and understood how quilts could tell a story using symbols and how to follow the Hero’s Journey, it was time to get into our groups and write our own Crusade Legend. I had the great opportunity to work with people I don’t usually work with: Izzy, Fraser and Kyle. So this was a great learning experience! Our legend had to follow the journey of a Christian hero as well as one from the Muslim point of view. While the two stories were meant to be separate with their own heroes and goals, together, they also created one big picture. To begin the task of writing the story, our group broke into two: Fraser and Izzy, and Kyle and I. Izzy and Fraser would write the Muslim’s side of the legend while Kyle and I wrote the Christian side. Below is our story idea from the Christians perspective. ⤵️

storytelling graphic organizer-yvx6nq

Together in class, we drew out what we wanted the quilt blocks to look like:

Story 1: Crusaders

William and Annie depart on a Journey to Jerusalem in search of revenge.

Along the way, they were attacked by a Muslim man and Annie shoots him with her bow and arrow.

Although the man tried to kill them, Annie feels sorry for him and kneels beside him to pray. Then, William and Annie continue their journey to Jerusalem.

Story 2: Muslim

Flynn, a Muslim man flees Jerusalem after witnessing the death of his wife and children.

During his journey, he sees two kids camping out in the forest. With jealousy, he tries to kill them because these kids got to live while his are dead.

Flynn dies during the attack, but forever lies peacefully among the flowers.

Ok, now you kind of see how each of the stories fits in with the other and how each are still their separate stories. To see more examples of how art could tell a story, our teacher, Ms. Willemse took us to the Gordon Smith Art Gallery. There, we used the featured art as examples of different stories that could be hidden within the picture. To do this, we each had to pic and stand beside a piece of artwork, then explain to the class, how it tells a story. Whether through words, symbols or realistic detail, each piece of art told a different story. Here are some of the masterpieces we saw! See if you can guess any of the stories hidden in the art!

Well, there you have it, how art or in this case quilts tell a story. Thanks so much for reading and stay tuned for more posts on the way! Bye!