Quiltmaker artfully juxtaposes beauty and tragedy
Pamela Bice considered the temperature quilt she was making, her third as part of a quilter’s group challenge. This one was a colorful visual representation of the high and low temperatures over the first 11 months of 2023.
Every row in the quilt had a block for each day of the month, and each block of fabric corresponded to a 5-degree temperature range indicating the high and low temperature for the day.
“It was just high and low temperatures, and I thought, ‘It needs something more,'” said Bice, a self-taught quilter who has been sewing since seventh grade.
Listening to the news, she heard a report of another mass shooting. “So I started to think about using a temperature quilt to document how many mass shootings had occurred.”
“Little did I know how many there would be in 11 months,” Bice said.
She titled the quilt “614,” representing the number of mass shootings that occurred during the time period.
Her statistics came from the Gun Violence Archive. The archive defines a mass shooting as four or more victims either shot or killed, not including the shooter.
Bice chose childlike, cheerful fabrics for the colors of the temperatures to contrast with the symbolism of the mass shootings. After trying several techniques to represent the shootings, she settled on using a gold grommet punched through the fabric on the days a mass shooting occurred somewhere in the United States.
She completed the quilt on Dec 22, 2023, just a day before the due date to enter it in the Pittsburgh FiberArts Guild member show held in Erie during 2024. Her quilt was given the Viewer’s Choice award and was accepted into the FiberArts International 2025 show, which begins in June.
“People would look at my quilt, and it’s all bright and shiny because the grommets reflect the light out and there are all of these pretty colors and then they read what it represents and you can see the look in people’s eyes. It’s very sobering,” Bice said.
“We all hear about the shootings that happen at the schools. I think we’ve become immune to feelings about it because it’s just another shooting that happened and they only talk about the very sensational ones. There was a day, I think in April of 2023, and there were 11 mass shootings on that day throughout the U.S.
“And while I don’t have any solutions or suggestions, I figured the more people that could be made aware of how prevalent the violence is, perhaps it would help us do something about it.”
Subsequently, for each month since she completed the quilt, Bice has kept a running total of additional mass shootings in the United States by adding a grommet to a cylinder for each one. She will either display the grommets in the cylinder or put them on the floor below the quilt at the international show.
The FiberArt International 2025 show is a juried exhibition taking place in Pittsburgh at two locations: June 6 to Aug. 30 at Contemporary Craft, 5645 Butler St., and June 20 to Aug. 30 at Brew House Arts, 711 S. 21st Street.
Bice’s quilt will be on display at the Brew House Arts location.
To pursue her fiber arts passion, Bice, a Scott Township resident, took early retirement in 2015 and created Zero Street Arts. She teaches quilting privately and has a weekly group class. She has won awards for her original pieces and has created private commission works, including a Survivors’ quilt for Magee Women’s Hospital.
Her works have been shown at Hera Gallery in Rhode Island, Three Rivers Quilt shows, Quilt Company East, Mancuso Hershey Show, FiberArts Guild of Pittsburgh member show at Erie Museum of Art, North Pittsburgh Quilt Show, and at Beaver Valley Piecemakers Show.