Size: approximately 60″ x 60″
Note: Foundation Paper Pieced polar bears and snowflakes. Striped border is warming stripes for Svalbard, Norway
This is one of my quilts that I am probably most proud of. Polar bears are my favorite animals in the world (they’re just cute, but they’ll eat you if they could!). When I started quilting, I knew that I wanted to make something to honor these incredible animals. I am also endlessly fascinated with the ways that people have used various crafts as a means for data visualization – for example knitters who make temperature scarves – and I wanted to do something similar to acknowledge the ways that climate change is affecting polar bears drastically. So part of my design for the polar bear quilt is to use Warming Stripes to indicate changing temperatures. I decided to use the warming stripes for Svalbard, Norway as it is a well-recognized site for a polar bear community. Therefore, the blue to red striped border around the center panel reflects this visualization.
Each quilt project is an opportunity to hone my skills and to potentially learn something new. For this quilt, I set myself on the path to learning foundation paper piecing (FPP). But I had to go beyond just learning how to paper piece, I had to figure out how to create the patterns myself and then how to create patterns for complicated organic shapes. My initial practice was in creating the pattern for the snowflake blocks that are at the top and bottom. I then used LibreCAD, with a great deal of trial and error and restarting, to import and trace reference images of an adult polar bear and cubs, and then how to cut that into my piecing pattern. It was complicated and I learned a ton doing this. I also learned that I really really enjoy this method of piecing, and it will likely be involved in nearly every project I do going forward.
As for some other design choices for the polar bear quilt, I was originally going to just have a single block of fabric for the ice under their feet, but since ice is not homogeneous looking and using some FPP methods, I decided to piece together different colors of whites and blues. Later on when I quilted that section, I purposefully did it in a random scattered fashion as an attempt to symbolize the threat to sea ice levels that polar bears rely so much on. I also wanted to feature the Aurora Borealis, so I pieced together an abstract representation to hang in the sky above my polar bears. Finally, the top section of the quilt is white and the bottom is the green and teals to represent both the snowy sky and the Arctic Sea that is the polar bears’ habitat. I decided to Quilter’s Dream’s bamboo batting to be more environmentally friendly and this has become one of my favorite materials to work with.
This was also the last project I made and completed on my Janome Magnolia 7330. I have since upgraded to a secondhand Janome MemoryCraft 8900 QCP that has been a great delight to work on.
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