Speakers
Description
This collaborative quilting workshop uses physical making techniques to understand complex data more deeply and create a shared artifact representing local data on energy usage as it has changed over time. We will discuss the historical (and extant) role of fiber arts in representing data, often in the communication of science as well as for social and political causes. Then, participants will make individual quilt blocks that will form a final collective quilt, which the organizers will assemble after the session. Over the course of the workshop, participants will receive an overview of how other creators represent information across many domains through a variety of textile mediums, including quilting, crochet, knitting, embroidery, and more, and how these projects are commonly structured. We will discuss an encoding schema for fiber arts, looking at how the geometric and material properties of the mediums afford representing variables in multiple ways. For the workshop, we will focus on color scheme and ‘quantity’ to demonstrate how participants can design their pieces to contribute to the community quilt, while also noting several categories of layouts makers use to embed structures into their projects. We will provide communal color schemes and encoding guidelines, and participants will make creative decisions on the marks and layouts of their quilt blocks. No previous sewing or fiber arts experience is required.
