Thank you for your kind words!

We chose quilting largely as an area that we already have expertise in. Anne Sullivan, in addition to having a PhD in CS and being a professor of Digital Media, is an accomplished quilter, has taught quilting workshops, and has judged quilt shows. I also have some background in quilting more as a hobbyist, and Karen Royer (one of our grad students) is a quilter as well, and Jordan Graves has background in textile arts.

Definitely the quilters have a LOT of knowledge that's directly related to how they use the software! We ran a focus group two summers ago (pre-covid) where we learned a lot about how, even though quilting works as a metaphor for CS in many ways, the way that quilters think about their craft doesn't necessarily neatly line up to how they need to think for the computing metaphor, if that makes sense? Quilters would talk a lot about playing with color and have a more improvisational way of thinking about design, which we're trying to accommodate in the software even though it still has a very rigid structure (quilts are sets of blocks, blocks are sets of patches, etc.). One thing I really hope is that quilters will be able to pick up on how computers need some formal structure to be able to reason about quilts, and so using the software requires adopting that understanding of what the formal structure is.

Long-term, at least, I'm really hoping to be able to use what we learn from this project to inform how to broaden public understanding of algorithms. Quilters have a lot of opinions about social media algorithms, for example! It's hard to figure out how to tie that all in to the workshops. A big takeaway for me from our time on this project so far is that there's a HUGE difference between how we approach teaching computational thinking in K12 settings vs. how we approach it for members of the general public, who probably won't go on to have careers that incorporate computing (though might!) but certainly are impacted by computing in their daily lives.

Thank you! It's a great question about participant outreach. We'd originally planned to run workshops both with existing guilds, as well as run ad hoc workshops for local geographic areas (e.g. at local quilt shops). We are still planning to run workshops with existing guilds; many guilds have run other sewing workshops during the pandemic that are fully virtual. But, our ad hoc group will be much more geographically distributed than originally planned. We're really curious to see how that distributed group works, especially since the only thing connecting some participants will be their shared love for quilting as they will no longer have regional ties.

Thank you! Our experiences as crafters have made it easier to use quilting as a metaphor in computational thinking. I also think the connections between quilting and computational thinking is a bridge that can go both ways. I do not have a background in quilting, but when I first joined the project the connections the rest of the team had made between computer science and quilting made it easier for me to understand quilters' process of designing and sewing. 

It's great to hear about that authentic 2-way learning, which can be a powerful for lever for engaging new participants and communities. What are you all thinking in about the possibilities for and usefulness of scaling this work especially now that is happening online? It seems that if one quilters guild or group finds the activities worthwhile, that the word would spread among others?

Yes, the distributed structure of quilting guilds means there's some promise for scaling the work up. Typically, guilds have local chapters with their own leadership structures and autonomy for planning their own events. Word of mouth is really powerful... anecdotally we've definitely seen that guild members and guild leadership will share activity ideas across guilds. So, we're aiming to develop our workshop materials so that others could facilitate workshops in the future, in different guilds. We'll be putting our final workshop materials online, including a guide for facilitators.

The transition to virtual workshops also means we've had to redesign absolutely everything to run online, which we hadn't really thought to plan for at first. It's taken a lot of effort to rethink for online, but we're hoping this will bring some long-term gains that we're excited to investigate further! We designed the software to be browser-based, the workshops should work on Zoom as well as in-person (when it's safe to do so again). We've also started an offshoot project with developing asynchronous, game-like activities that use the tool (e.g. collaborating with others to make a "Sudoku" quilt with custom-designed blocks).

Thanks! Yeah, a huge inspiration for this project was spending time with quilters who would insist they are "bad at math" or "could never do the computer stuff" and then would turn around and solve some complex optimization problem in their head to figure out how to minimize fabric waste!

Software development went through a lot of phases... Jordan is really the main person who has worked on software design. We tried to use quilting language and metaphors, minimize jargon, and highlight the collaborative nature of quilting by letting people see what others are designing and adopt those designs into their own. We found in our focus group that jargon is a significant barrier of entry to learning more about computing among this population. We also spent a lot of time trying to balance simplicity (in limiting the number of patches available, establishing a grid that people build their designs on) with expressivity -- we started out with just Half-Square Triangle blocks, and felt very limited. You're welcome to play with the software yourself here, if you're interested: http://livequilting.herokuapp.com/new/

It does mean that workshop design is a bit more complicated (we'll find out soon how that goes!), because the computer science concepts can be somewhat hidden in the software alone.

e-textiles would be really interesting! Out of scope for this project, but people on our team have worked with them in the past (e.g. I was part of a team that made a quilt-based board game for all ages: https://ebeeproject.net/main/). I think, in general, we've tried to focus on how to make this project relevant, motivating, and authentically interesting to the population -- they are already experts in their craft, so they are a different audience to work with than, for example, kid-focused e-textiles activities where kids may be learning the sewing skills alongside the electronics.

Thank you! That's great that your daughter has been quilting! How long has she been a quilter?

The role of community has been a pervasive thread in our focus group, survey, and interviews. To study how community may impact what we're doing, we are working on two different recruitment methods for our workshops:
1. recruiting from a pre-existing quilt guild, so that participants will already know each other and can rely on pre-existing community
2. recruiting via social media (Instagram and Facebook are most likely, as that's where the quilting communities we are aware of are most active) so that participants are less likely to know each other ahead of time

Since we've needed to change our workshops to be virtual due to COVID, it opens up the ability to recruit with less constraints on participant location.

Our hope is to refine and clearly document the design of the workshops to the point that other people can teach them as well, which would offer many more opportunities for people to participate!

Thank you for visiting our project, Danielle!

Thank you so much for your kind words! We are indeed both motivated by and interested in exploring family/multigenerational impact.

We definitely have some more work to do to fully address appeal across cultures, and this is something we've been grappling with in both software and workshop design. We are trying to strike a balance between simplicity and expressivity with the software, to make sure that a broad range of potential quilts can be generated with the software (across multiple styles and traditions)... the patches (and subsequent blocks) span multiple cultural traditions in quilting. Right now, though, the software doesn't easily support more "improvisational" styles (e.g. alternative grid, improvisational piecing), nor does it support applique.

We recruited to our focus group from a local (Central MA) African American quilt guild, and heard a lot from those participants about the importance of preserving traditional techniques, storytelling and activism through quilting, and fostering community. Our focus group participants also brought up their frustrations with cultural appropriation in quilting, e.g. the (predominantly white) Modern Quilt Guild's appropriation of Gees Bend quilts. We also have been discussing the need for attribution (e.g. in response to issues in quilting where male designers can take or receive credit for women's work).

We are about to run our first workshops with this software, which will inform changes we make to the software and workshop facilitation guides, and I think it will be really important while we iterate upon their design for us to work with a diverse set of guilds to be able to really address broad appeal and applicability -- both in the quilting software, and in discussion topics related to computing! For example, seeing the impact of biased datasets is something that can easily come up in the workshops, since the generator can only create quilts that come from the blocks people have made.

Thank you so much for your kind words! Knitting has so much in common with CS and Math as well; it's something I really want to get better at (although I have made one very wonky scarf so far!)

When you talk about analysis of the design, do you mean with the software or us as facilitators? I love hearing about people's stories and why they made the design choices they did and often have conversations around that. I'm not quite sure if that's what you mean, though.

The Queen Lili'uokalani quilt is such a beautiful piece, and the story behind it is incredible! Thank you for sharing it! Quilting (and other textile-based crafts) have a long history of being used for protest and activism. As a knitter you may already be familiar with the knitting espionage efforts during WWI. The AIDS quilt is another great example of this type of work, as well. You might be interested in the Social Justice Sewing Academy and the work they're doing if this is a topic that interests you! http://www.sjsacademy.org/

I'm just going to have a geek out crafter moment right now. :)  

As for the design, I meant analyzing design of one's own handcrafted or passed down quilts rather than the software design. I realize that is probably far outside of the scope of this research, but from a funds of knowledge or tapping-into-local-knowledge perspective, I was just wondering if after doing software quilt designs people might be able to apply computational thinking to get further insight in their own designs.

Thanks for all the tips on the Social Justice Sewing Academy!