The inaugural display of the AIDS Memorial Quilt occurred in 1987.

The textile art and craft of quilt-making, in which fabric panels are sewn together to create a pattern, can be used as a way to document historical events. Because they are pieced together from multiple fabrics, quilts can be designed to display words and images documenting separate, but related, events. When sewn together, those panels can be used to place events into an historical sequence or context. In precisely this way, the NAMES Project created a quilt to serve as a memorial to people who have died of AIDS. Each 3-by-6 foot panel of the quilt was created by the friends and family of one person lost to this disease, with the expressed hope that his or her life not be forgotten. The first display of the quilt was on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. on this date in 1987. In addition to memorializing the lives of those lost, the organizers of the event also hoped to raise the nation’s awareness of AIDS, which has become pandemic around the world and which is particularly devastating on the African continent.

Xpeditions
The Spread of AIDS (9–12) helps students learn more about the global spread of AIDS. As patterns and networks of economic interdependence change (e.g. increased trade networks), conditions are favorable for the spread of diseases such as AIDS. In this lesson, students research the spread of the disease and report on how this problem has been affected by changes in global transportation and trade.

In AIDS in Africa I: The Scope of the Problem (9–12), students search for data related to the discrepancy between the impact of AIDS on people in sub-Saharan Africa and on people in the U.S. and determine mathematically the relative impact of AIDS on Africa versus its impact on the U.S.

AIDS in Africa II: More Than Sympathy (9–12) focuses on why the disastrous numbers surrounding the AIDS epidemic in Africa exist. Students explore what is being done, and what can be done, to ease the situation.

In Africa's Struggle With AIDS (6–8), students come to understand the enormity of the impact of AIDS on the population of Africa by comparing its effect there with its effect on the population of the world in general, and especially on that of the United States.

Students research the spread of AIDS and report on how this problem has been affected by changes in global transportation and trade in International Trade in a Global Village (9–12) focuses.

ARTSEDGE
The curriculum unit, Discovering Peace (K–4), is designed to help elementary students, particularly ESL students, explore the concept of peace and their feelings about it. In the first lesson, The Quilt Story (K–4), students use the book "The Quilt Story" to explore the places where they find peace—whether at school, with their family or in their neighborhood, country or world. Students act out various parts of the book using pantomime skills and build word recognition and understanding as they explore the concept of peace and their own feelings about it.

EDSITEment
In both Family and Friendship in Quilts (K–2) and Stories in Quilts (K–2), students recognize how people of different cultures and time periods have used cloth-based art forms to pass down their traditions and history. The lesson is designed to heighten students' awareness of how quilts have reflected and continue to reflect the lives of the people who create them and of how quilts record the cultural history of a particular place and time.

History in Quilts (3–5) helps students recognize how people from different cultures and time periods have passed down the tradition of quilt-making. Students research how art and history are connected through quilts and the purposes and uses quilts served in different places and cultures in the past.

Illuminations
Parts of a Square (3–5) is a multi-lesson unit in which students investigate fractional parts of the whole and use translation, reflection, rotation and line symmetry to make four-part quilt squares. Students work independently and together in teams to create designs and then use "flips, slides and turns" to replicate the designs and color fractional parts. Teams of students then create paper quilts from their design squares and present the quilt designs to the class. The teams analyze the different quilt designs and discuss the numerical and geometrical similarities and differences among them.