By Ellen Oppenheimer

Students at the Oakland Parks and Recreation-sponsored Oakland Fine Arts Summer School have worked together with quilt artist Ellen Oppenheimer to make several quilts for children with serious illnessnes.
    Over 60 students spent three weeks learning how to design and create quilts. The incoming third and fourth graders started with some good ideas and plain white muslin fabric. They dyed the fabric in plastic buckets and used some of the dyed fabric to make Japanese-inspired resist or shibori-style fabric. They also learned a unique technique where they folded fabric into a multilayered triangle and then soaked each side of the triangle in a different colored textile dye. When all the fabric was dyed, the students sewed and ironed the pieces together.

    The quilts will be on display along with other artwork by the Oakland Fine Arts Summer School students at the Museum of Children’s Art (MOCHA) in August. When the show at MOCHA is finished, the quilts will be donated to George Mark Children’s House and the Children’s Quilt Project. George Mark Children’s House, located in San Leandro, is the first freestanding children’s respite and end-of-life care facility in the U.S. The House offers roundthe- clock, transitional and endof- life care for children with life-limiting or life-threatening illnesses. All care is based on the principles of palliative care.
    The Children’s Quilt Project was started in 1988 when one woman in Berkeley decided to make a quilt to comfort a child with AIDS. Friends and neighbors soon joined the effort, and as the years passed, the network of volunteers in Children’s Quilt Project (CQP) grew to reach every state and six other countries. As the AIDS epidemic became less of an immediate threat to children, CQP evolved into an organization that gives quilts to children in hospitals and other environments when there is a need for comfort. For more information contact Oppenheimer at (510) 658- 9877 or equilter@earthlink.net