Many Voices as One: How to Make a Community Quilt

by Lizzy Rockwell

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In this webinar, Lizzy Rockwell will share her nine years of experience making communal quilts as artistic director of Peace by Piece: The Norwalk Community Quilt Project. Peace by Piece is an intergenerational afterschool art program in Norwalk, Connecticut, that mentors youth through quilting. With this group and others, Lizzy has designed and coordinated six community quilts (with a seventh in the works) which hang in public places.

About the Contributor

Lizzy Rockwell is the artistic director of Peace by Piece: The Norwalk Community Quilt Project. Lizzy conceived of this project as a way to mentor young people with an engaging after school art program, that would put them in the company of older adults.

She did not know that much about quilting at the time, but remembered the warmth and fun of sitting around a quilt frame in her living room as a teenager in the 1970’s. Conversation flows, friendships build, and at the end you have a quilt!  What started as a nice idea turned into a community project with lasting and far-reaching impact.  The group meets in the community room of a public housing complex for seniors. Lizzy was first asked to design a quilt made by Peace by Piece for The Stepping Stones Museum for Children in Norwalk, CT. Since then public libraries in Norwalk and Bridgeport, CT, have asked for quilts for their walls.

Lizzy is also a picture book author and illustrator with over 30 books published. She also has illustrated many award-winning games for the toy company, eeBoo and has a 28 foot long mural installed in the Norwalk Community Health Center.  Amongst the books Lizzy has both written and illustrated are: Good Enough to Eat: A Kid’s Guide to Food and Nutrition, The Busy Body Book: A Kid’s Guide to Fitness, and Plants Feed Me.  She is currently working on a book about a community quilt.