Quilt Shanty is a collaborative public art installation by Madeline Cochrane and Emily Quandahl that reimagines a hoop house as a winter gathering space on the frozen lake. Wrapped in a quilted covering, the structure takes a literal approach to the idea of a barn quilt: a tactile textile quilt stretched over an agricultural form.
Installed as part of Art Shanty Projects 2026, the Quilt Shanty creates space for community and creativity during winter’s stillness. As a whole, the shanty celebrates rural craft traditions such as quilting, embroidery, woodcarving, and wood burning, while highlighting the seasonal cycles of rest and care when the land is quiet. Through hands-on play, visitors are invited to explore quilting as the puzzle it is, working with quilt-square pieces to create their own designs.
Cochrane created the folk illustrations on muslin, along with the wood-burned quilt tiles and quilt-square puzzle pieces that ground the participatory experience. Quandahl constructed the hoop house structure and created a 9' × 16' quilt composed primarily of quilt squares designed and constructed by Quandahl, incorporating Cochrane’s illustrated muslin alongside leftover painting scraps from Quandahl’s studio, drop cloth, and colored vinyl. Quandahl also designed a colored vinyl trifold puzzle key to guide the activities.