Miah M and Colleen W's Artist statement

Artist Statement Miah M. 4/25/11

My quilt square shows the south flag in 1861. In the middle of the flag there are words that say Eli Whitney Cotton Gin. Then at the bottom of the flag there is a drawing of the cotton gin and what the cotton gin does.

At the top of the flag there are ten cotton plants. In the background the cotton plants have a green background so that the cotton on the plants stick out. The cotton gin represents the slaves and what they had to do with the cotton gin, the slaves had to use the cotton gin to clean the seeds and other unwanted stuff from it.

I chose to do the cotton gin for my quilt square because I thought the name was cool and the topic sounded interesting. I thought about where I would find stuff about the Cotton Gin and Eli Whitney but I learned that if you just type in Eli Whitney Cotton Gin and a lot of stuff came up. It was really easy to find info.

I learned that Eli Whitney's invention the Cotton Gin back-fired on him, but it did bring the cotton production up higher and the demand for slaves went up higher which I found very interesting to learn about. I thought making this quilt square was really cool.

Artist Statement Colleen W. 4/25/11

The quilt square I made with Miah shows the south flag in 1861. In the middle of the flag are words that say Eli Whitney Cotton Gin. There is a hand made drawing of the cotton gin and description of what it does.

I the top of the south flag has ten cotton plants. In the background the cotton plants have a green background so that cotton sticks out. The cotton gin represents when the cotton production went up and so did then demand for slaves. The slaves had to clean the seeds from the cotton and any other unwanted stuff.

I chose to do the cotton gin for my quilt square because I thought the topic sounded interesting and I knew that this topic would be easy to find.

I also learned that Eli Whitney's invention Cotton Gin back-fired oh him, I found it interesting that there was so much info. I found that making this quilt square was really cool and fun and very interesting.