Know Them, Raise Them, Be Them Sampler Helen Keller,1880-1968

Home , Helen Keller Day, The Miracle Worker

Know Them, Raise Them, Be Them Sampler

Helen Keller,1880-1968 CE

Nineteen months after Helen Keller was born in Tuscumbia, Alabama on June 27, 1880, she lost her hearing and sight after a bout of scarlet fever. Five years later, Alexander Graham Bell himself referred her parents to a specialized teacher, Anne Sullivan, from the Perkins Institute for the Blind in Boston. With Anne’s tutelage, Helen learned to read and write with braille, and to communicate with hand signals. Aided by an interpreter she would go on to study at schools for the deaf. At the age of sixteen she entered the Cambridge School for Young Ladies in Massachusetts, eventually becoming the ﬁrst deaf-blind person to attain a bachelor’s degree.

Helen came to understand that people in poor economic circumstances were more likely to be blind than others, and soon connected the mistreatment of the blind to the oppression of workers, women, and other groups. This led to her embrace of socialism, feminism, paciﬁsm, birth control, and women’s suffrage. From her own experience she developed a strong belief in the potential of every human being, famously stating that “we know that everyone has something positive to contribute to the world around them—if they are given the chance.”

Helen became a celebrity at an early age for overcoming her disabilities. Stories of her life inspired a movie, Deliverance in 1919, as well as the Pulitzer Prize winning play and movie “The Miracle Worker”. She even spent several years performing on the vaudeville stage to educate the public and to support herself.

Helen self-identiﬁed as an author and published multiple books, wrote essays in journals and letters to dignitaries. She traded letters with the wealthy and presidents, and corresponded with Mark Twain who was one of her most ardent supporters. Although some women's magazines found the subject of blindness to be taboo because of its association with venereal disease, many published Helen’s articles. She advocated removing the disabled from asylums and made sure that veterans who lost their sight in battle received proper rehabilitation services.

As an activist, she became a cofounder of the American Civil Liberties Union, worked for 44 years with the American Federation for the Blind, and established Helen Keller International, one of the oldest international nonproﬁt organizations working to prevent blindness and ﬁght malnutrition. She was instrumental in challenging the Lions Club International to become “Knights of the Blind”. Helen received honorary doctorates from Glasgow, Harvard and Temple Universities.

Viewed by some as a proponent of radical politics, Helen was placed on an FBI watchlist. Nonetheless, she met with every President of the United States from Grover Cleveland to Lyndon B. Johnson. In 1964, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and in 1980 President Jimmy Carter authorized Helen Keller Day.

Helen Keller’s Block contains:

Fabric A (ﬂying geese/pinwheel): (1) 71/4” square Fabric B (light/sides of ﬂying geese): (4) 37/8” squares Fabric C (light/bright, bar 1): (1) 11/2” x 141/2” strip Fabric D (bar 2, medium): (1) 2” x 141/2” strip Fabric E (bar 3, medium dark): (1) 21/2” x 141/2” strip Fabric F (bar 4, dark): (1) 2” x 141/2” strip

Step 1: Draw a line diagonally from corner to corner across the back of each Fabric B 37/8” square. You’ll be making “Flying Geese 4 at a Time” again.

Step 2: Place (2) Fabric B 37/8” squares on the Fabric A 71/4” square at opposite corners, lining up the diagonal lines you drew in Step 1 - the corners of the smaller squares will overlap a bit. Sew 1/4” away and parallel to the drawn line across both squares, turn the unit and sew 1/4” away from the other side of the line.

Cut between your seams, approximately along the drawn line. Press to the smaller triangles. Your smaller triangles continue to overlap so that there is at least a 1/4” seam allowance.

Place the other (2) Fabric B 37/8” squares on the corners of the large triangle of these units with the diagonal line pointing toward the overlap of the smaller triangles. Stitch 1/4” away from both sides of the line on each unit. Cut these units apart on the diagonal line, press toward the smaller triangle and you have (4) ﬂying geese units.

Step 3: Sew the Fabric C 11/2” x 141/2” strip to the Fabric D 2” x 141/2” strip lengthwise, sew the Fabric E 21/2” x 141/2” strip to the Fabric F 2” x 141/2” strip lengthwise. Then sew these (2) units to each other lengthwise with Fabrics D and E being the long seam.

Cut into (4) 31/2” segments. (You will have just a little bit leftover that is scrap.)

Step 4: Sew (1) of the strip sets from Step 3 with lightest fabric on the left to darkest on the right to the “top” of a ﬂying geese unit from Step 2. Repeat with all other units.

Step 5: Sew the (4) units from Step 4 into pairs as illustrated with ﬂying geese units at ninety degree angles to each other:

Step 6: Assemble the block by sewing the sets from Step 5 together so a pinwheel forms in the middle. Your Helen Keller pinwheel of progress block is complete and ﬁnishes at 121/2” at this point: