Back to School

Since I’m kicking this off in September, I thought it’d be fun to do a little back-to-school project to start things off. My heart flutters a bit thinking about how much I loved the beginning of each school year – new clothes, new teachers, new binders & notebooks to meticulously arrange(!). As my friend Carrie—a middle school teacher—recently said: Thirteen-year-old girls could teach captains of industry how to organize. So true.

Thought I still have a real temptation to buy a new binder and a book of stickers and conjure some back-to-school-magic, I came up with a better idea for my first project. I’m going to make a globe. A tiny, embroidered fabric globe.

The idea is not my own, it actually dates back over 200 years here in America. In the early 1800s globes weren’t cheap or easy to come by. But a little Quaker school in Pennsylvania was determined to teach geography and decided if they couldn’t afford to buy globes they would make them. So the female students were taught to sew globes.

Ruth Wright's globe sampler, 1815

I first saw one of these globes, dating from 1815, at the museum where I attended graduate school. I fell in love with it. First off, it’s adorable. And so lovingly made. But I also fell in love with it because at the time it was made, most girls weren’t taught geography and astronomy and all the other subjects the boys got to learn. But the girls who made these globes got to learn all that. I like that the globe represents the classic girlie activity of sewing with all the smarts of the boys layered on top. Little Quaker trailblazers.

My interest in the globe was a bit ironic…when I was about the age of the young Quaker girls making their globes, I remember being subjected to a battery of state testing in school; I scored in the 96-99^th percentile in literally every section except for map comprehension. There, I scored in the 40s. What a girl.

Back when I was doing the research on these globes I found a woman who actually wrote out all the directions on how to make your own. I’ve wanted to do it ever since, and now seems like the perfect time. And I’m much better at map comprehension these days so here’s to confidence that the continents will end up in the right hemispheres at the very least…