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!
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.
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…)
