Chelsea Watson
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100x100 Computational Design Challenge

Throughout 2020 I created 100 computational designs in 100 days as a way to learn creative coding and explore generative art

Day 41 - Basket Weave

basket-weave-1.png

A good friend of mine, Kathleen, is an amazingly talented quilter. She gave me my first real design job over ten years ago and actually tried teaching me how to quilt - it’s not easy! Kathleen’s taken an interest in this project of mine and thoughts of how we could collaborate on something have been on my mind throughout the last couple months. So, for this week, I’m going to take inspiration from quilts. Specifically, the textile works of art from Gee's Bend Quiltmakers:

The women of Gee’s Bend—a small, remote, black community in Alabama—have created hundreds of quilt masterpieces dating from the early twentieth century to the present. Resembling an inland island, Gee’s Bend is surrounded on three sides by the Alabama River. The seven hundred or so inhabitants of this small, rural community are mostly descendants of enslaved people, and for generations they worked the fields belonging to the local Pettway plantation. Quiltmakers there have produced countless patchwork masterpieces beginning as far back as the mid-nineteenth century, with the oldest existing examples dating from the 1920s. Enlivened by a visual imagination that extends the expressive boundaries of the quilt genre, these astounding creations constitute a crucial chapter in the history of African American art.

(https://www.soulsgrowndeep.org/gees-bend-quiltmakers)

I don’t want to try to replicate the quilts - their stories aren’t mine to tell. But, I do hope to capture some of their unique beauty and draw some attention to this important piece of textile art history. I’m starting today with this abstract basket weave quilt by Nettie Jane Kennedy (see below). I’ve been struggling with how to make a basket weave pattern for ages, and know that my code could still use A LOT of refinement, but today’s sketch was a good excuse to work through it a bit. I wanted to try to capture some of the organic feel of Nettie’s quilt so programmed in some random touches of green, and made the tan strips vary slightly, rather than having the shapes all perfectly symmetrical.

Sketch:

https://editor.p5js.org/chelseamwatson/present/L5OK0-9CV

“Basket Weave” by Nettie Jane Kennedy, 1973

Pseudocode:

  • Draw 3 vertical rectangles in the top left corner

  • Draw 3 horizontal rectangles stacked to the right of the vertical rectangles

  • Continue this pattern to the end of the canvas

  • When you get to the right end of the canvas, start again from the left, but with 3 horizontal rectangles

  • Continue this pattern to the bottom of the canvas

Drawings:

Code:

count = 0;
x1 = 50;
y1 = 50;
x2 = 150;
y2 = 50;

function setup() {
  createCanvas(800, 800);
  noStroke();
  background(250, 76, 45);
  fill(237, 213, 157);
}

function draw() {

  l = random(90, 110);
  s = random(15, 25);

  oddOrEven = (count % 2);
  if (oddOrEven == 1) {

    //second row horizontal
    rect(x1, y1, l, s);
    rect(x1, y1 + 40, l, s);
    rect(x1, y1 + 80, l, s);
    x1 = x1 + 240;

    //second row vertical
    rect((x2 + 20), y2, s, l);
    rect((x2 + 60), y2, s, l);
    rect((x2 + 100), y2, s, l);
    x2 = x2 + 240;
  } else {

    //first row horizontal
    rect((x1 + 120), y1, l, s);
    rect((x1 + 120), y1 + 40, l, s);
    rect((x1 + 120), y1 + 80, l, s);
    x1 = x1 + 240;

    //first row vertical   
    rect(x2 - 100, y2, s, l);
    rect((x2 - 60), y2, s, l);
    rect((x2 - 20), y2, s, l);
    x2 = x2 + 240;
  }

  r = random(1, 16);

  if (frameCount > r) {
    fill(139, 214, 153);
  }
  if (frameCount > (r + 1)) {
    fill(237, 213, 157);
  }

  if (x1 > 750) {
    x1 = 50;
    x2 = 150;
    y1 = y1 + 120;
    y2 = y2 + 120;
    count = count + 1;
  }
  if (y2 > 750) {
    noLoop();
  }
}
Chelsea Watson