Tucked away in a small bedroom sits a Bernina 830 sewing machine bought in 1981, the year Saundra Wimberley graduated from Frenship High School and headed off to college. That machine, now 44 years old, has quite the story to tell.

“I know it, and it knows me. I would love to see an odometer reading on that thing,” laughed Wimberley. She cannot help but smile as she reflects on the many memories stitched together between her and the Bernina.

Wimberley’s love of quilting is woven deep in her family history, going back generations to her grandmothers’ and great-grandmothers’ quilts. Now back at Frenship as a Crestview Elementary first grade teacher, she shares that love with each of her students, showing them the beauty of quilting, an artform that is slowly fading.

“I love teaching the kids about quilts. Maybe five students out of the class actually know what a quilt is because the art is getting lost, and the need for it is getting lost,” said Wimberley. “Some quilts are utilitarian, some are pieces of art, and others show the bonds between those who helped make it.”

The bonds between the makers. Wimberley sees this every time she pulls out her great-grandmother’s quilt. “All the ladies in my great-grandmothers friend group put their names on the quilt squares,” she said. “This is a treasured quilt that showed their friendship back then, and I still have it today.”

Her great-grandmother’s cherished quilt and the idea that memories can be forever linked by thread served as her inspiration for a class project that is still going strong more than two decades later.

In 2001, during her first year of teaching at Crestview, Wimberley asked each of her first-grade students to bring a nine-by-nine-inch square of fabric to class. It could be a square of cloth from an old t-shirt or pajamas, material from a beloved baby blanket, fabric that displayed their favorite color, animal, or cartoon character. It could be anything they wanted, as long as it was meaningful and represented somethings about themselves.

“I’ve gotten all kinds of things over the years, but my favorites are the ones that represent cultures,” she said.  “I’ve gotten fabrics from India, China, several Asian countries, and some African fabrics. One student gave me a very delicate handkerchief from China that represented her family’s heritage.”

Over the weeks, Wimberley collected the fabric squares and had each student write an explanation of how the material represented them and its significance. Then, sitting behind her trusted Bernina she carefully worked her fingers across each precious square of fabric, sewing and connecting the patches. For hours, she quilted a masterpiece to the humming tune of Bernina, stitching her students’ memories together one square at a time. Slowly and meticulously, Wimberley traced each of her students’ handwriting onto the quilt, placing their “why” and significance for their chosen fabric under each of the squares.

Once complete, Wimberley brought the quilt to display in the classroom for her students to see. “I want them to touch it, feel it, understand it, and read it,” she said. “They go quiet and feel the quilt and say, ‘This is us. This is us.’”

For 24 years, Wimberley’s first-grade classes have created quilts. That’s 24 quilts sewn together by Wimberley and Bernina, and 24 quilts uniquely designed by her Frenship students. Year after year, her 24 classes have shared the same beautiful reaction of admiration and pride.

“The students always say, ‘This is us.’. We talk about how each one of these squares – each person – is individually special and precious and worthy of being a part of our group, but when we put it all together, we make something beautiful,” she said.

Even as first graders, Wimberley says her students understand and appreciate the meaning woven into the quilt. It is more than just a pretty decoration for the classroom. She incorporates the quilt into lessons throughout the school year to teach about the history and local culture of quilt making and how quilts have been used over the years. However, Wimberley says the lessons go much deeper. She uses the quilt as a visual for the students to embrace messages of kindness, inclusion, acceptance, and building community. The quilts help her students see their own uniqueness and value while also seeing the beauty of different cultures and backgrounds coming together as one community.

“Each child can be proud of their own contribution while recognizing the significance of the group,” said Wimberley. “I love seeing their reactions when they see how beautiful they are together.”

At the end of the school year, Wimberley opens an auction to give the parents of the class the opportunity to purchase the class quilt. The money from the auction goes back into the classroom to help cover the expenses for the next year’s class quilt and other class supplies.

After two dozen years, Wimberley says it has been difficult to keep track of the Frenship families who kept the quilts, but from time to time, she receives heartfelt messages from former students sharing updated photos of them holding their quilts. For Wimberley, the messages remind her that she is making a lasting impact on the students, and it serves as motivation to continue creating quilts with her students each year.

“It makes me so happy to see they still have them and take care of them,” she said. “Ultimately, I would like them to appreciate the local culture of quilts and that it shows us together, but also that it made them understand, even as a child, that they were in a comfortable, loving, and supportive environment in their school, and that somebody cared enough to demonstrate that.”

To some, it may look like an old quilt with seemingly random pieces of fabric. It might be used for warmth. It may be draped over a bed. It may sit folded in a box in a closet or attic. But to the students of the class who one-by-one gave a piece of themselves for Wimberley and Bernina to stitch together, it is a masterpiece - a work of art - representing their friendship and the bond between the makers.