Many insects are inactive during the winter and enter a sleep-like state called diapause. Butterflies and moths most often spend the winter “sleeping” in cocoons or chrysalises. I think they look a little bit like fancy sleeping bags! The patterns on chrysalises can be incredibly intricate and beautiful, perfect inspiration for an art project! Since insects make their own, instead choose a favorite stuffed animal to create a sleeping bag for. Gather a few simple materials and take inspiration from these talented insect artists!
This is a fun way to learn some important art concepts like:
- Shapes: depending on age level, ask students to work with specific shapes and interaction of different shapes.
- Symmetry: ask students to imagine a line of symmetry down the center of the chrysalis.
- Sewing/ Fiber Art: this is a easy project to introduce simple sewing techniques.
- Biomimicry: artists, scientists, architects, and engineers often take inspiration from nature when solving problems and inventing things.
This is a fun way to learn some important science concepts like:
- Animals in Winter: lots of animals have important adaptations for surviving winter. Diapause is one of those adaptations.
- Adaptations: animals have adapted to different environmental conditions.
- Leave the Leaves: research which caterpillars overwinter in chrysalises and which ones have developed alternate strategies for survival. How do fallen leaves play into these tactics?
A photographer named Levon Biss takes amazing photos of all different types of chrysalises that are a great reference to check out for this project.
Differentiation & Notes
When working with younger friends, I would cut the sleeves of fabric in advance. I would also use glue to add the shapes with a piece of cardboard stuck in between the layers.
Older students may want to stitch on the shapes and/or add sewn details.
This project was designed for elementary aged students, to modify for older kids, consider scaling the size up and making a human size sleeping bag. You could either augment an old existing sleeping bag or sew one from repurposed fabric. (The pants shortcut will no longer work.) The other option is to make more of a fabric wall hanging without changing the scale.
Chrysalis Sleeping Bags for Stuffies
Materials:
- Old sweatpants
- Felt scraps
- Needle and embroidery floss
- Gold fabric paint (or whatever color you’d like, but we noticed a lot of gold in the chrysalises, and discovered that one of the Latin roots of the word chrysalis is chrȳsós meaning gold)
- Glue- school glue is fine, fabric glue will last longer
Cut the legs off your pants and gather the rest of the supplies. Choose a stuffed animal that will fit in your sleeping bag and look at some different types of chrysalises for inspiration.
Sew one end of your pant leg shut. You can do this as simply or decoratively as you’d like.
Cut scraps of felt into shapes and sew or glue them to your sleeping bag. We noticed a lot of triangles in the chrysalis examples and let them inspire some of our patterns. Older students might want to sew on details, but a little school glue will do the job without much fuss. Just make sure you don’t glue the two sides of the sleeping bag together! (stick your hand in and separate them just in case) Add details with the fabric paint.
Let your sleeping bag dry and then pop your stuffie in for a nice long hibernation (technically diapause…)
