Janie Stokes was a master at teaching and at quilting. Over the past several years, she combined those talents with the aim of seizing children’s attention and firing up their enthusiasm to read and to explore other disciplines.
About a decade ago, she began using quilts as a teaching aid at Mountain View Elementary School, Marietta. For example, said her husband, Bruce Stokes of Woodstock, she would assign students to prepare blocks of cloth in geometric shapes and to exacting dimensions as a supplement to their math and science lessons. Then she would sew the blocks together into a quilt, he said.
A quilter since the 1970s, Mrs. Stokes began in the 1980s collecting children’s storybooks with quilt themes and over the years amassed 140 different tales. Gradually, she developed the idea of creating quilts as individualized and bedsheet-size illustrations for her books.
In 2009, she presented her idea as a challenge to her quilting guild, the Chattahoochee Evening Stars. Doris Evans of Acworth, coordinator of the guild’s ongoing storybook project, said so far the group’s members have produced quilts to match 37 storybooks and are working on 30 more.
“Janie’s aim was to inspire children to read more, to think about the times and places of the stories they read and to appreciate the art and crafts involved in putting quilts together,” Mrs. Evans said. “Now we loan the books and the quilts that go with them to schools and libraries throughout metro Atlanta via our website: storybookquilts.org.”
Janie Elizabeth Martin Stokes, 61, died Tuesday at her Woodstock residence of cancer. Her funeral is 10 a.m. Monday at Timothy Lutheran Church in Woodstock. Visitation is 2-4 p.m. and 6-8 p.m. Sunday at Woodstock Funeral Home.
Born and reared in Potsdam, N.Y., she earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in education at the State University of New York, Potsdam. She taught for five years at an elementary school outside Rochester, N.Y., and another five years in Munising, Mich., before moving to Georgia with her husband in 1982.
Here she taught first at Chapman and Boston elementary schools in Cherokee County and was named the county’s outstanding teacher in 1988. Moving on to Mountain View Elementary School, she won a similar honor in Cobb County in 1994.
Mrs. Stokes was greatly admired by fellow educators.
Said Jeanette McMurray of Marietta, a Mountain View teacher now retired, “I can’t praise her enough -- she was such a creative teacher. She had an inquiring mind, and whenever she learned something new, she was eager to share it.”
Debbie Kneubuhler of Smyrna, a Russell Elementary teacher, said Mrs. Stokes was a phenomenal teacher of children but also was an outstanding teacher of teachers. “Janie,” she said, “inspired me and others to draw up a program of instruction about robotics for our gifted classes throughout Cobb County.”
Nancy Janas of Marietta, another Mountain View teacher, said Mrs. Stokes was the broadest thinker she had ever known.
“Janie didn’t just think outside the box when it came to communicating important concepts to children. She thought well beyond the box, encompassing the world. Janie seemed to know something about everything,” she said.
Mrs. Janas added that Mrs. Stokes was also exceptionally fit and loved Jazzercise -- to the point of bringing a Jazzercise instructor to Mountain View to encourage other teachers to work out. “Janie’s touch was everywhere in our school,” Mrs. Janas said.
Survivors besides her husband of 39 years include a daughter, Heather Wurst of Pennsburg, Pa.; a son, Nathaniel Stokes of Central Square, N.Y.; a sister, Catherine Yack of Huntsville, Ala.; two brothers, Leon Martin Jr. and Robert Martin, both of Potsdam, N.Y., and a granddaughter.
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