Nina Paley

Cattle of Egypt

I’m back to working on Seder-Masochism after a very long hiatus. Here are some biblical Egyptian cattle:

And here they are after I AM THAT I AM gets through with them:

PaleGray Labs finally gets its own web site

PaleGray_screenshot1 PaleGrayLabs.com

I’m all wordpressed out for a while.

QuiltBank

Our Thousand Dollar Quilts now have a web site of their own. Offered at face value.

Interestingly, money is not culture; currency is. More on that in my essay Culture is Anti-Rivalrous (scroll down to part IV). And here I am, a Free Culture advocate minting money on my quilt plotter. My impulse to share source files is mitigated by this. Free Culture readers of this blog: how can I best share the culture of this project without compromising the identity of the bills themselves? I like to share the “source code” of my projects once they’re out there, but I don’t see how I can do that with this one.

resampling DST files

Our Quilt Plotter’s rather frustrating software automatically resamples DST files, for no explicable reason. While we struggle to communicate with its manufacturers to overcome this “feature,” I attempted to explain the problem in pictures.

1. A line, or vector file, is not a DST file yet. A DST file is comprised of many points, like so:

2. This has a high sample rate, because there are many points spaced close together. — 2. This has a *high* sample rate, because there are many points spaced close together.

3. Above is a lower sample rate, with "stitches" in black. There are fewer points and they are spaced further apart. The machine always, always, automatically RESAMPLES DST files, which inevitably degrades line quality. Here's a resample at the same sample rate (frequency/spacing of points): — 3. Above is a *lower* sample rate, with “stitches” in black. There are fewer points and they are spaced further apart. Here’s a resample at the same sample rate (frequency/spacing of points):

4. Every time the path is resampled, it moves further from the original line. This happens even if it's resampled at the same sample rate, as shown here. — 4. Every time the path is resampled, it moves further from the original line. This happens even if it’s resampled at the same sample rate, as shown here.

5. Same sample rate, worse fidelity because of resampling.

6. If we resample enough times eventually our path won't resemble the original line. — 6. If we resample enough times, eventually our path won’t resemble the original line.

sampling_demo30008 — THIS is what we want the machine to read. We can control all the points in the DST file in Mathematica. We just want the machine to not resample them, to keep the points in the original file we give it. Here the points are evenly spaced except at corners and curves to preserve fidelity.

Tree Applique Quilt

More raw-edge applique on the quilt plotter! About 94″ square. Cotton fabric, cotton-polyester batting, polyester thread. The process:

Stitch all-over background design, including shapes where leaves, fruits and branches go.

Cut out pieces of leaf- and fruit-colored fabric. Lay them on the quilt (still in the frame) over where they’ll be stitched down. Return frame to quilt plotter and stitch.

When the leaves and fruits are stitched, lay a big piece of brown, tree-colored fabric over them where the branches go, and another piece where the trunk goes. Stitch.

Trim the base of the tree and lay a piece of green fabric over it as above.

Stitch that sucker down per the digital design you’ve carefully prepared. Then fold the fabric over and quilt on the top.

When done stitching, remove quilt from frame and trim. Begin snipping.

Snip snip snip.

Snip until done, then bind.

Here’s the back.

Et voila.

Water Wheel

Back on the Quiltimation front, I was wondering if I could arrange animated frames on a quilt in a mandala/medallion pattern, rather than left-to-right cells. This would essentially be a quilted phenakistoscope, with the animation emerging as the whole thing is rotated (we’d keep the camera and lights stable, and rotate the quilt).

The saturated colors here would be lost, although I could use a few colors of thread. The elements are early Leviathan designs, and Water from Chad Gadya which is still in (very slow) progress.