The Quilt Lab

Create a sample quilt square

Each response adds another layer to the square: color, pattern, stitched marks, figures, borders, and thread. The resulting square holds an individual experience while placing it in relationship with the experiences around it.

Layered textile portrait for Rethreading the Algorithm

Sample rendering

A square shaped by selected responses

Example inputs

Change the pattern

ThemesChoose up to 3

Themes -> Color

Themes shape the quilt's color palette. Like fabrics gathered into a quilt, different colors hold distinct parts of an experience while becoming meaningful in relation to one another.

What changedChoose one

What Changed -> Quilt Pattern

What changed determines the central pieced pattern. Drawing from the geometric pattern-making found across African American quilting traditions, the pattern turns an individual experience into a form that can repeat, vary, and enter into relationship with other squares.

Who shaped itChoose up to 6

Who Shaped It -> Stitched Emblems

The people and influences that shaped the experience appear as small embroidered emblems. They function like stitched marks added to the quilt's surface, preserving traces of the relationships, people, and communities carried within a story.

Care + joyChoose one

Care & Joy -> Figure

Care and joy bring a human figure into the center of the square. The figure places lived experience at the heart of the quilt, continuing the project's emphasis on people as the makers and interpreters of technological experience.

response agencyChoose up to 3

Response & Agency -> Pieced Clothing

How someone responded shapes the figure's clothing, which is assembled from patterns inspired by African American quiltmaking. The figure literally wears pieces of inherited visual traditions, representing how knowledge, strategies, stories, and ways of making do are carried from the past and reworked in the present.

understandingChoose up to 3

Understanding -> Quilted Border

How someone understands technology shapes the border surrounding the square. Borders have both structural and visual roles in quilts; here, the border frames the story through the participant's way of making sense of technology and situates the individual square within the larger archive.

What should changeChoose up to 3

What Should Change -> Threads Carried Forward

What someone believes should change introduces new threads that move beyond the completed pattern. These threads represent what the participant chooses to carry forward: a question, warning, possibility, demand, lesson, or imagined alternative that can become material for what is made next.