Makerspace Community Quilt
It’s up! After more than a year, the Makerspace Community Quilt is finally hanging in our space, and it makes me smile every time I see it.
The story of the Makerspace Community Quilt started in January 2025, when Twyla Exner, Assistant Teaching Professor in the Department of Communication and Visual Arts, asked if we’d like to be a community partner for her Making Art with Community class. In that class, students work in groups to collaborate with a community partner to design and facilitate a collective art-making experience. We said yes immediately.
Four students took on the Makerspace as their project: Bryanna Lynn, Chantel Manuel, Kaitlyn Bartlett, and Fausto Richard-Guerrero. Together they worked with Twyla and me to come up with an idea: a quilt made by our community, to help promote the space while also sharing what made the space special.
To make it happen they came up with the design, figured out what materials were needed, created a zine and other promotional materials, hosted drop-in events in the Makerspace, and set up a station where anyone could contribute a square. In the end they collected work from across TRU: in total 88 hand-decorated six-by-six inch squares, each one made by a Makerspace user, student, staff member, or friend. Then they sewed it all together. And not all of them even knew how to sew when they started!
Once the front was complete, Makerspace staff members Dayun, Jesse, and Olivia (who also contributed squares) helped finish the work and arranged to have it mounted in the window by TRU Facilities.
I am grateful to Twyla for bringing this project to us and to Bryanna, Chantel, Kaitlyn, and Fausto for doing such a great job. I’m also grateful to everyone who participated by making a square. The result is a little chaotic, full of colour, and made by a lot of people who care about learning by making things together.
If you contributed a square, your work is up there on that wall. Go find it. You’re part of this place now, literally.
— Franklin
