88 Blankets, 100 Valentines: How Mount Desert Island Loves Over and Over Again.
Feb 14, 2026
BAR HARBOR—It began with a really good Polartec fabric sale.
Unable to resist, artist and Bar Harbor Historical Society’s Director of Engagement Nikki Moser ordered almost 400 yards.
“I needed to do something that felt like direct action, and so many people are cold,” she explained.
The next step?
She started sewing and sewing. She sewed a bit more.
And so far, she and others have made and donated 88 blankets through multiple social service agencies on Mount Desert Island and in Bar Harbor.
“Now we have little group of folks working together sewing and distributing. The need seems unending, so Paige Collins bought another 400 yards of Polartec,” Moser explained.
LOVE IS SOMETIMES SIMPLE
Valentine’s Day is often thought of the day of romantic love: red roses, proclamations of “I love you” and marriage proposals, big events full of chocolates and fine dining.
Sometimes, though, love is simpler.
Sometimes, though, love is about taking care of each other, creating comfort or warmth or just saying, “Hey, I see you. I support you.”
That kind of love happens all the time on Mount Desert Island. People work together to create a potential grocery store, people leave notes of kindness at the library, fund food pantries or staff them, make food and share it for free, create hundreds of bows for children’s holiday presents.
People shovel driveways and stairs, pull cars out of snow banks, offer generators.
The list of those small kindnesses is endless and real, just as real as the moments of strife.
This Valentine’s Day artist Deborah Page made 100 miniature collages by hand and passed them out to others.
On the back?
She stamped, “Choose love.”
CHOOSE LOVE
Eric Fromm wrote about and studied love. To him, love was a verb. It wasn’t about lust or infatuation or those big, deep feelings we have for our family and friends.
Love is an action.
“It is love as action that concerns him, love as comprised in the work that embodies it: patience, kindness, attention, responsiveness, and responsibility. This is a very different and sobering outlook compared to the sugary, nutrient-free version of love dished up in mass entertainment. Falling in love is easy, says Fromm. It is standing in love that is hard: continuing to occupy the ground of love even when under great pressure, even when we’re not feeling loving at all,” Pierz Newton-John wrote.
Ask Nikki Moser and Paige Collins why they are making all these blankets and inviting others to join in. It’s not just because Moser found a great deal on fleece.
It’s because they are creating love in action, standing in love for people they may never know.
Page was inspired by a bumper sticker that said, “I hope something good happens to you today.”
“I’m a mixed media artist and I have a lot of collage paper scraps hanging around my studio and I thought making small cards would be a fun way to use them up. And since Valentines’ Day was coming up, the cards became Valentines, and I thought if I gave them away randomly it would be a nice way to make that bumper sticker come to life for a few people, just randomly,” she explained.
“There has been so much negativity and and anxiety in the world lately, it’s just my way to contribute a little kindness,” she said.
Kindness creating action creating acts of love has a history on Mount Desert Island through small cluster of artists, thinkers, writers, organizers, craftspeople, businesses, parents. It might be the creation of an ice skating rink or a preserve. It might be with just a neighbor catching a dog, or dozens looking for a lost one. It might be the a parent-teacher organization volunteering to create dances and fundraisers to help local teachers and kids and schools.
Love in action is what Page is doing and it’s what is happening with the blanket project, too, and Bar Harbor’s ice skating rink, the rebuilding of so many places and creation of others.
“It felt like the blankets were something that no one could argue about, and they were direct action immediately filling a need. Soft and warm in a world that feels very cruel right now,” Moser said. “There have been lots of hands besides mine involved in this.”
And they want others to join in.
“We are welcoming folks to learn how to sew, help us cut, deliver and help us buy more while we have this great price on fleece,” Moser said. I think about how projects like this not only help individual people, but they help us build and strengthen our community.”
“We are hoping folks want to contribute to the cost of the fleece and even join us in sewing and distributing,” Moser said.
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