Pollinator Quilt

The state forest where I volunteer asked me to speak about their pollinator garden at a teacher workshop there.

Most of the pollinators are very fast-moving, and so small – even if the participants spotted them while we were in the garden, they wouldn’t be able to see details.  For the Pollinator Festival I worked at a few months ago, I had made a butterfly quilt as a sort of over-sized guide book page, so that people could see larger-than-life views of butterflies they were likely to spot in the garden.   Here it is again.

I  decided to feature more pollinator species in a companion quilt that I could use for my talk.

I already had  some photos of pollinators that I had taken at the garden a few years ago, but not enough for an entire quilt.  I took some more pictures at my house, and then printed them all out on inkjet fabric.   I chose fabrics to pull out the colors of the coneflowers in the pictures, and I used a few fabrics from the butterfly quilt, to tie the two together visually.

It still needs binding, but it was finished enough that I could use it at the garden talk.  Now I need to get some pictures of hummingbirds and bats, to round out my pollinator portraits.

I have been really happy with these as teaching quilts.  They’re portable displays that are pretty indestructible.  They focus attention, remind me what I planned to talk about, and spur questions and conversations that help me fit information to people’s needs.

If you are interested in more details about the fabric printing, here is the earlier post about the butterfly quilt.