The QR Code Quilt

For me and for many, quilting is a distinctively feminist practice: it is a practice and art of labor that is centralized on constructing an artifact of comfort, rooted in the home, rooted in the family, and rooted in collaboration. Such as Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use” explores, these quilts are active participants in my family and our life together, messy and falling apart at the seams, but warm and comforting. Our fabric materials and artifacts have lasted and will continue, and yet our society esteems a greater prioritization on the electronic. On the “digital.” For this project, I am especially interested in QR codes - which are nifty communicative tools that take a user, via their phone, to a web-based site. Here we tie together a couple threads, namely challenging the “digital” by sewing a QR code quilt with my mom. Quilting a blanket is firmly digital, such as Benjamin Peters frames this term, but how is this made complicated when we sew QR codes into our pattern? Moreover, how do QR codes and quilts serve as memory devices? If quilts relay my familial history in a material way, how can, if at all, QR codes do the same? Through co-design and collaboration, my mom and I engage in discursive and critical design to explore a gendered practice and act of labor through a particular focus on the “digital.”

Note: I/Me = Kelsey ; Mom = Mary  

In the summer of 2021, I spent a week with Mom quilting. I had not touched a sewing machine since elementary school when Mom and paternal grandmother were teaching me to sew my first quilt. Everyone quickly realized I was far more interested in the fabric and color combinations (so much so that in trying to teach me to make one quilt, I made two - one I fondly now call “The Rainbow Cat Quilt” which I only finished binding during this week of quilting this past summer), and that I was actually quite bad at following patterns - and that is what sewing a quilt is: constructing a mosaic of pattern with fabric.

While revisiting quilting, Mom and I went to  Quilt Lizzy  in Jacksonville, NC for fabric eighths (1/8 of a yard) to try to make another rainbow quilt - and every person that we spoke to, that worked there, that helped us were older individuals that reminded me of my grandmother. These quilters helped me cut fabric and pick out the best sewing thread, while they helped Mom sign up for a  long-arm sewing  class. It was a collaborative experience where everyone shared their personal expertise and solutions to help others.

For me and for many, quilting is a distinctively feminist practice: it is a practice and art of labor that is centralized on constructing an artifact of comfort, rooted in the home, rooted in the family, and rooted in collaboration.

I learned how to sew in a multigenerational setting in my childhood home. Mom made quilts throughout my childhood. Some were worn to pieces, deconstructed, and sewn into a new blanket whereas others that my brothers and I didn’t think were as soft are still in pristine condition. Quite a few have holes, but that is because my brothers and I fought over who could use them and battled it out via tug of war or because our lab, Traveler, chewed part of it away (but we have continued to use this quilt for about two decades with the hole - making it a favorite). Some have visible wear, and some don’t as much - but everyone knows that the softer blankets are the ones that are older and might have a few small holes at the seams. Other quilts have signatures and messages of love attached in the corners. All are gifts that Mom gave my family.

Such as Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use” (1973) explores, these quilts are active participants in my family and our life together, messy and falling apart at the seams, but warm and comforting. 

It is a maternal practice and labor, but we are also reliant on machines to help us. We could hand sew blankets, but using a sewing machine makes it more manageable. Neither of us is a professional. We do this for fun, for a bonding experience. 

For this project, I wanted to make another quilt with Mom, but do it through the lens of criticality. The quilts my family have used throughout my life still exist - in some form or another.

I have lost track of how many appliances my family has used throughout the years; between dishwashers breaking, printers and remotes and batteries and lightbulbs, AC units not lasting decades of use, iPhones designed to be unsustainable. Our fabric materials and artifacts have lasted - and will continue. And yet, our society, by and large, esteems a greater prioritization on the electronic. On the “digital.” For this project, I am especially interested in  QR codes  - which are nifty communicative tools that take a user, via their phone, to a web-based site. But these QR codes cannot be for forever…. They will crash and break and die. And yet, they are everywhere. 

So, we have a couple threads to tie together, namely challenging the broad understandings of what is “digital” by sewing a QR code quilt with Mom. Benjamin Peters (2016) frames this term as rooted in our digits, our index fingers specifically: "digital media do what fingers do" (p. 94) and "Digital media thus have meaning insofar as they index the world" (p. 99). Therefore, a quilt is firmly digital, indexing the world, memory making, and labor of those who craft them. But how is this made complicated when we sew QR codes into our pattern? Moreover, how do QR codes and quilts serve as memory devices? If quilts relay my familial history in a material way, how can, if at all, QR codes do the same?

Through co-design and collaboration, both strong pillars of  inclusive design  and  design justice , Mom and I engage in discursive and critical design to explore a gendered practice and act of labor through a particular focus on the “digital.”

As mentioned above,  Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use”  served as a primary inspiration for this work. This short story follows two opposing perspectives on how to utilize material artifacts, as embodied and actionized by two sisters: one sister, Dee, wants to display and preserve family quilts, whereas the other sister, Maggie, wants to use them. An excerpt is included below:

Dee (Wangero) looked at me with hatred. "You just will not understand. The point is these quilts, these quilts!"

"Well," I said, stumped. "What would you do with them?"

"Hang them," she said. As if that was the only thing you could do with quilts.

In my family, we use quilts. We use them to shreds. We also, societally, use QR codes. On any given day I might pass a dozen - using them at school, at restaurants, on flyers, on posters, and everywhere in-between. Thus, this project aimed to unify these objects and materials of utility. Here, I situate this experiential practice as discursive design and, thus, a “catalyst for reflection” (Tharp & Tharp, 2019, p. 103), while also leaning into the methodology of making. In doing so, we follow Garnet Hertz’s identification of critical making as a concept and methodology of making -- prioritizing intentionality, critical analysis, and the opportunity to learn through experimentation and doing (2016, p. 15). Moreover, Matt Ratto and Garnet Hertz emphasize: “we find [critical making] useful as a model for interdisciplinary pedagogy: it is a materially-based mode of tactile practice that primarily sits outside of academic disciplines” (2019, p. 22).

Similar to critical making, SSL Nagbot (a.k.a Lilly Nguyen, Sophie Toupin, and Shaowen Bardzell) in  “Feminist Hacking/Making: Exploring New Gender Horizons of Possibility”  (2016) focus on hacking and making, which together “comprise both a method and a framework to introduce new kinds of expertise, such as craft and care, into conversations of information technology.” While exploring feminism in relation to hacking and making culture and production to interrogate systemic injustice at the sociocultural level, SSL Nagbot argues that this avenue “is not only concerned with revealing the structures of gender power, but also works very explicitly to create new ways of relating to one another across technologies. In the process, hacking/making are being redefined to include modes of care, repair, and intimacy.” With this framework, I see our QR Code Quilt as a demonstration of feminist hacking/making - especially as it aligns with the capacity for practicing care. 

This project is distinctively feminist: challenging what is celebrated and recognized as scholarship, knowledge production and sharing, and the purpose of coding more broadly -- through a mode of production that is predominately gendered along a matriarchal line, largely hidden, and highly specialized. As such - this work is counter-data sharing. In  Data Feminism  (2020), Catherine D'Ignazio and Lauren F. Klein address the systemic and cultural issues of what gets counted and recognized as data - while pointedly address the power of data in our world today. Similarly, Krystin Gollihue and Abigail Browning (2019) ask: “What counts as knowledge? What counts as technical literacy and technology? What counts as making?” (p. 235). Together, Gollihue and Browning argue: “For us, an intersectional feminist critical making must reside in what happens at the margins: play, feeling, space, relationships, and the unknown. This requires attention to embodied narratives: what makers experience outside of institutions, the pressures they exist within, the places they are kept out of, and the practices they find familiar and safe” (p. 235) and “we needed to create our own forms of procedural literacy, intertwined with story, experience, and feeling” (p. 230).

Similarly, I recognize this work as an example of  data humanism , as developed by Giorgia Lupi. As Lupi emphasizes, I strive to “embrace complexity” and “remember that data is imperfect. (as we are).” Quilting is complex and sometimes imperfect, especially the quilting I perform. QR codes are too. Through this work we aim to humanize them the both, together.

Quilting has been used for memory making in both homes and for large- scale projects that we can identify as displays of data humanism. Dating back to 1985, the  AIDS Memorial Quilt  is a community-generated and collaborative quilt that serves as an act of remembrance, demonstration of visibility, and a physical product of love and care -- and the “largest community art project in the world” (ATEC). The AIDS Quilt Touch Team identifies this project as “healing work” that strives to draw attention to this global pandemic and remember those we have lost.

I also identify that this work corresponds to Staying with the Trouble (2016), where Donna Haraway writes about the multifaceted “sf,” at one point explaining: “string figuring is passing on and receiving, making and unmaking, picking up threads and dropping them. sf is practice and process; it is becoming-with each other in surprising relays” (pg. 3). Not only does a sewing machine, powered by electricity and the physical movement of our feet, make and unmaking a yard of fabric, but quilting as a whole is mosaic composition of fabric, thread, stuffing made and unmade together: coming together to become something new. Moreover, Haraway’s understanding of sf as a “practice and process” directly aligns with experimentation and experiential learning -- and the principles of critical making and discursive design.

Along with the materiality of quilting,  “Trans of Color Poetics: Stitching Bodies, Concepts, and Algorithms” by micha cárdenas  (2016) explores the capacity of the stitch (a fundamental action and object in quilting) is explored as both a demonstration of violence and as something that is more healing and more empowering: “While the stitch still can contain an element of violence—penetration of the skin by a needle, for example—I imagine it as less violent than the cut, and intending to join, in the service of healing and creation, rather than in the service of destruction.” (Note: Mom accidentally pricked and cut her hand with a pin and I almost ran over my index finger with the needle running.) cárdenas also emphasizes: “Informed by a material practice of making objects by sewing, the stitch describes a poetics of object making as well as a process of making new concepts.” Once more, we have a prioritization on the process to make something new. 

We followed the quilt design below:

Mom likes to quilt and sew off of a pattern design. I, by nature, find directions very overwhelming and have a tendency to just lean into improvisation. This design was a compromise of those two strategies. Anyone who quilts or sews will identify this as 100% not a pattern, and yet it provides specifications (such as colors, estimated lengths, and how the squares can be arranged) while also providing room for flexibility. And in the words of Mom: “From what I can see, I think it looks fabulous!"

Independently, we both selected ten websites that spoke to something (anything) from our past year. Mom selected sites that reflected shared experiences between us, like seeing wild horses in Coastal NC this past spring, whereas I pulled together sites of as broad of an array as possible, thus ranging from Dolly Parton’s website to a drugs.com website. (Note: Mom actually ended up picking 12, just in case, and we added them all to the quilt. I also will not be listing the specified QR codes and their references. Come play with the blanket to find where the codes take you to.)

I created QR codes for each site through  Google Chrome’s “Create QR Code for this Page” function  and  MeQR’s free QR code generator.  Mom then printed these onto white fabric. 

Piecing a blanket, sewing it together, and then quilting it (the three steps we followed for this process) all require great care.

Piecing a blanket refers to the first step of constructing the top layer of the blanket: making the pattern. Sewing it together is using the machine to sew the pattern together. Quilting, however, is the process of binding it all together (the top layer, the stuffing, the backing) with a threaded pattern. Not all quilts and blankets are quilted - and then some are intensely and beautifully quilted that the fabric is not the focus, rather the quilted pattern design is. 

Here, we opted for an extremely simple quilting design - rooted in ensuring the longevity of the quilt (to prevent the quilt from falling apart from wash and wear) rather than for aesthetic means. Thus, the quilt design includes quilting in the ditch (along the sewn folds in the blanket) and across the cream squares. 

The video below relays the process that we followed to make the quilt:

Mom premiered this video with her 2nd grade class. She messaged me afterwards expressing:

She also said one student wanted to show the video to their own mom.

Interestingly when most people learned about this collaborative co-design project, they predicted that Mom would sew and I would write. Yet, that is not authentic and sustained collaboration and co-design: that’s an outsourcing of labor. Here, Mom and I strove to create a quilt together. 

In doing so, we ludically engaged in critical making and discursive design. Quilting is labor rooted in deliberate care - to produce a product that demonstrates care. 

While sewing, Mom taught me about the machine (how she received it as a gift from my father when we lived in Texas and how to move the need horizontally to adjust the seam placement), how she taught herself how to sew when we lived in Japan, and why we needed to do certain things to help the quilt last. We also discussed Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use” and what it means for blankets and quilts to be on display and preserved or used everyday. We discussed how Mom’s home has both small quilts on display, but a far majority are for use (at one point, I was wrapped up in four different quits). We also realized that not everyone would even be able to open the QR codes. My father, for example, could not use the codes because his phone was “too old”/did not have the technological capacity to read the codes. And yet, everyone can use the quilt. Shortly after finishing the blanket, my dog laid on it for several hours.

We also talked about things not directly related to this work, like our lives and our family. We simultaneously played with dogs, ate food, and debated on if it was too hot or too cold in the room. We laughed a lot. 

This quilt making process, rooted in exploring memory preservation through QR codes and quilts, became a valuable memory in and of itself.

Mom noted, more than once, that QR codes are not cute. Mom picked out fabrics specifically to add a cuter feel to the quilt (she also noted that she later thought the fabric patterns were too pretty for this project, but was glad we ended up using them). I am partial to flowers and anything yellow, and Mom appreciates warm tones and inviting patterns. 

But QR codes are not designed for cute, approachableness - rather to provide an efficient and fast transfer of information. They are rigid in design, rather inflexible (one can change some components - but the overall design composition and conventions are rather concrete). They are, pointedly, visual codes - and in this quilt we leaned into the pattern, treating it similarly to the floral fabrics we sewed alongside them. Coding itself, including QR codes, is gatekept behind the computational elite, a demographic that is traditionally gendered in itself due to a male-dominated STEM field/systemic and societal gender notions. Therefore, quilting and QR codes are developed by two very different gender populations and communities, with very different priorities and goals. 

Ultimately, this work also illustrates digit-making and working as a feminist approach to coding memory, archiving, and memory-making and preserving by prioritizing a gendered practice of labor that is rooted in domestic care and collaboration through co-design. Not only do the QR codes provide a scrapbook of media representing our last year, but the quilt itself is the vehicle through which those memories are held and stitched together.

Importantly, I also wanted to try to collapse the wall between my life and my schoolwork. I prioritize collaboration and co-design in my work and in my life, but how could I purposefully bring those together? Making a quilt together was an opportunity for this. And I know that we will use the quilt for decades.

Shortly thereafter she said, “I got way too much going on at one time.”

Balsamo, Anne, Leticia Ferreira, & AIDS Quilt Touch Team. [ATEC at UT Dallas]. 2020. Video Essay the AIDS Memorial Quilt: Origins, Legacy, Futures [Video file]. Retrieved from  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HsDs3YRRZg&t=385s 

cárdenas, micha. 2016. "Trans of Color Poetics: Stitching Bodies, Concepts, and Algorithms." The Scholar & Feminist Online. 13(3) - 14(1). Retrieved from  https://sfonline.barnard.edu/traversing-technologies/micha-cardenas-trans-of-color-poetics-stitching-bodies-concepts-and-algorithms/0/?print=true 

D'Ignazio, Catherine, & Lauren F. Klein. 2020. Data Feminism. The MIT Press.

Gollihue, Krystin, and Abigail Browning. 2019. "Towards an Intersectional Feminist Critical Making." In L. Bogers, L. Chiappini, & L. Munn (Eds.), The Critical Makers Reader: (Un)Learning Technology (pp. 228-236). Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures.

Haraway, Donna J. 2016. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham: Duke University Press. Project MUSE  muse.jhu.edu/book/69253 

Hertz, Garnet. 2016. "What is Critical Making?" Current. Retrieved from  https://current.ecuad.ca/what-is-critical-making 

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Nagbot, SSL (a.k.a Lilly Nguyen, Sophie Toupin, and Shaowen Bardzell). 2016. "Editor’s Introduction: Feminist Hacking/Making: Exploring New Gender Horizons of Possibility." Journal of Peer Production, Special Issue on “Feminism and (Un)Hacking.” (8). Retrieved from   http://peerproduction.net/issues/issue-8-feminism-and-unhacking-2/feminist-hackingmaking-exploring-new-gender-horizons-of-possibility/ 

Peters, Benjamin. 2016. "Digital." In B. Peters (Ed.), Digital Keywords : A Vocabulary of Information Society and Culture (pp. 93-108). Princeton University Press, ProQuest Ebook Central,  http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ncsu/detail.action?docID=4336786 

Ratto, Matt, & Garnet Hertz. 2019. "Critical Making and Interdisciplinary Learning: Making as a Bridge Between Art, Science, Engineering and Social Interventions." In L. Bogers, L. Chiappini, & L. Munn (Eds.), The Critical Makers Reader: (Un)Learning Technology (pp. 17-28). Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures.

Tharp, Bruce M., and Stephanie M. Tharp. 2019. "How Do Discursive Objects Communicate –In Theory?" In Discursive Design: Critical, Speculative, and Alternative Things (pp. 100-109). MIT Press.

Walker, Alice. 1973. "Everyday Use." In Love and Trouble: Stories of Black Women. Retrieved from  https://faculty.weber.edu/jyoung/english%206710/everyday%20use.pdf