Quilt Bot is a web application which takes a user uploaded image as an input, generating from this an abstracted version of the image in the form of a patchwork pattern. The patchwork pattern can then be used to craft a patchwork quilt at home. The project explores the use of a ‘Digital Collaborator’ – the Quilt Bot app – to assist an ‘Analogue Collaborator’ – the human crafter – in the creation of personal and unique objects for the domestic interior.
Garments and fabrics are said to host memory (Hunter, 2019), have importance to the identity of those in their possession (Slater, 2014) and are valued as signifiers of connections to people and places (Hunter, 2019). Patchworking offers a cost effective and low environmental impact method of prolonging this intangible value through the reuse of fabrics and garments at the end of their life. Quilt Bot builds further on this by offering the domestic patchwork quilt maker the opportunity to create a patchwork whose pattern has been abstracted from a meaningful image, input to the Quilt Bot algorithm. Once complete, the patchwork may host layers of intangible value – memories and connections associated with the fabrics used, as well as those translated from the input image now hidden within the pattern.
Quilt Bot helps to encourage the creation of domestic objects which are expressions of their inhabitants and perhaps their relationships to others, and as such are valued over and above their physical, material being. It is hoped that apps like the Quilt Bot can encourage the learning of new skills and the development of material intelligence - a material understanding of the world which can empower making and repair (Adamson, 2018) - heightening the value perceived in material objects and resulting in the desire and ability look after these objects. Repairing when damaged, passing on through generations and reducing the negative environmental impact of the creation of new objects.
Quilt Bot was created in collaboration with illustrator and software developer Rosemary Ferrier. It was launched at the Glasgow Print Fair 4/11/2023 and can be accessed on the following URL: https://www.quilt-bot.com/