By: Karen Hunter Quartz
In the weeks leading up to the Quinceñera, a robot named Quincy came to life. A team of students crocheted squares as part of their seminar, Crafting for Change, and I had the great pleasure of working alongside them. Quincy belongs to the street art tradition of yarnbombing, where fences, trees and lightposts are wrapped in knitting or crochet to make a political statement or just bring joy and warmth to an urban environment.
The project started in January as an introduction to this movement, followed by a crochet lesson for the entire class. Founding social studies teacher Rebecca Solomon created the Crafting for Change seminar as a place for students to make things. As she explains, “learning how to make things, and making mistakes as you do so are the basic elements of making social change. We start here –
with crochet and embroidery and clay – and direct our craft toward the things we want to fix in the world.” During our first lesson, I learned that a handful of seniors in the class were very talented fiber artists. The next time we met, this group–Alex Haro, Mark Flores, Araceli Gabriel Gomez and Jocelyn Villegas–stepped up to lead a yarnbombing project for the Quinceañera.
In conversation, I found out that these students shared my love of making things. Jocelyn explained that she loves making gifts for her family: “For my nephew, I made a little crochet bunny and then for my sister, I made a bag. For my mom, I made her coasters, for my dad I made some gloves and for my other sister, I made her shirt.” Araceli added a common sentiment about the soothing nature of crafts: “A mi me gusta mucho porque es muy divertido, también porque siento que me relaja mucho al estar haciendo muchas cosas.” (“I like it because it’s really fun and because it relaxes me after doing so many things.”) I also learned that Alex has a lot of fabric at home and enjoys making plushies and that Mark used his embroidery skills to create artwork in his AP Studio Art class.
I shared with the students that during the pandemic, my neighbors and I yarnbombed a “grandmother” tree with outstretched arms and a mask. Children would give her a hug and leave small rocks underneath. Principal Kim gave us the green light to yarnbomb a lightpost in the Lower School quad. Inspired by the grandmother tree and the popular kid’s show Yo Gabba Gabba, Alex suggested that we make something cute and fantasy-like because it was a space for little kids: “If they saw a robot, maybe they could get excited and it could make them happy.”
Over eight weeks, the box in the corner of the classroom filled up with crocheted squares. Mark embroidered “15 years of growing together” on the robot’s chest and Alex made the face and sewed up the arms with felted hands. We also got donations from the school’s Crochet Club, organized by Gillian who was teaching her peers in the next room on Tuesdays during lunch. The week of the Quinceanera, we spent two hours in the library putting Quincy together. As Araceli shared, “Lo que pienso es que fue muy divertido al armar un rompecabezas de diferentes tipos de maneras de tejer y también porque participé en uno de esos. Pienso que está bien para los niños.” (“It was fun to build what you could call a jigsaw puzzle with different pattern patches. I participated in the activity and I think it’s great for kids.”)
As we finished up the project, Alex suggested we add our names and Mark used one of the Crochet Club’s contributions to embroider our initials–JAMAQ–on Quincy’s back. We sewed our creation onto the lightpost, feeling the joy that comes with making things and growing together. Jocelyn shared, “I feel proud of my friends for achieving this, for being able to make a project for our school.”
