MEDIA, Pa. — Penn State Brandywine faculty are turning quilt making into data storytelling. Love Data Week 2026, hosted annually by the Big Ten Academic Alliance the week of Valentine’s Day, is an international celebration of data in its many forms. Laura Guertin, distinguished professor of Earth sciences, and Annie Jansen, interim head librarian at University Libraries, were recognized for their quilt “Challenged Stitches: A Quilt with Banned Book Data,” earning them the Penn State Faculty/Staff Data Visualization Award. Together, they went on to represent the University in the Big Ten Academic Alliance Data Visualization Championship where they earned the two top honors in the competition.
The event features a series of virtual workshops, panels and competitions centered around data literacy, ethics and creativity. This year's theme, “Where’s the Data?” emphasized an innovative approach to understanding data, shown directly in Guertin and Jansen's quilt, “Challenged Stitches.”
The quilt is inspired by real-world data that transforms statistics into a visual experience.
“Our quilt that we made is a visualization of American Library Association data from the last 11 years,” Jansen said. “It's a bar graph for the number of challenged books and each bar is made to represent a book for each year.”
By stitching together data on challenged books, this unique project highlights trends in censorship while making complex information accessible and easy to understand, they said.
“Love Data Week is an international event that takes place across the globe with a different theme every year,” Guertin said. “It is meant to raise awareness and engage people in data ethics, data visualization and data management.”
Their quilt made a clean sweep in all the categories at the national level.
“As the Penn State winner, our quilt was automatically forwarded to the Big Ten Academic Alliance competition in the faculty and staff category. From there, we won both the popular and judged vote,” Guertin said.
Guertin and Jansen also emphasized the uniqueness of their project, highlighting the power of creating an analog visualization using only fabric. In a field that is often dominated by digital tools and screens, their quilt stands out as a personal way to communicate information.
They noted that their success reflects a broader appreciation for handmade work.
“Two out of the three years this competition has been held, an analog piece has won, which speaks to the idea that people like something handmade,” Guertin said. By making a quilt, they were able to create something that presents complex data in a way that feels accessible and human.
For Guertin, this project offered a refreshing alternative to her typical work.
“I am so precise in my daily life as a scientist that being able to be creative was a lot of fun,” Guertin said, emphasizing the importance of blending artistic expression with analytical thinking to communicate data in creative and meaningful ways. Storytelling is not limited to words or numbers; it can be stitched together, one piece at a time.