AI Art Quilt Club Challenge

AI, or artificial intelligence, has advanced by leaps and bounds. This challenge is to make an AI generated quilt into a real quilt.

For example, the following images were generated by an AI art app called “Dream” which can be found online or in the app store for Apple or Android. These are not real quilts, but rather a computer interpreting a description into what it thinks that description would look like.

The first one was the prompt “modern black and white geometric quilt with pops of color”.

These two rainbow, circular quilts were generated with the phrase “whimsical circular modern rainbow quilt”.

This quilt was designed with the description “modern black and white quilt with rainbow accents”:

And this one was designed with the description “red to cyan gradient modern flower quilt”:

This challenge works like this:

First, you will come up with up to 3 different quilt descriptions to plug into AI. The group leader will input your description into an AI art app and generate 3 different results per phrase. For example, if you turned in 1 description, you will have 3 different quilt images returned to you; if you turned in 3 phrases you will get 9 quilt images. From those images you will select one to translate into a real quilt.

Tips: Use a good amount of adjectives in your description by combining the following: Think about colors (red and cyan, black and white, rainbow, yellow, cool colors, etc.), shapes (Triangles, circular, curves, chevrons, stripes, hexagons, etc.), features (flowers, rings, pawprints, etc. - really any noun you want featured) and styles (modern, geometric, bold, gradient, etc.). Don’t forget to use the word “quilt” in your description. Keep your description to 200 characters or less.

An example of a good description: “orange and green geometric modern quilt with triangles”

If you want to play around with how sensitive or smart AI Art apps are, we recommend the app “Dream” by WOMBO. You can work with it online through their website, or you can download the app to your phone.

STLMQG Note

While this is being promoted in the St. Louis Modern Quilt Guild, it is not an official guild challenge. We do have prizes for participating and would love to welcome any interested guild members to sign up. People outside of the STLMQG are welcome to participate too!

Steps to Participate

  1. Please fill out this form with all your contact information and your 1-3 descriptions for the AI.
  2. Participants will be given their choice of AI images from their descriptions by the group leader by February 28, 2023. If you sign up after this date, your images will be sent approximately 3 days after you sign up.
  3. On March 1, 2023, the club challenge begins! By now, you will have picked an AI quilt to recreate. You now have until November 30, 2023 to complete your quilt.
  4. If you finish your quilt early, pick a different quilt to translate into reality for more chances at a prize!

Other Details

We plan on hosting some virtual meetings to talk about our projects and any challenges we might have over the course of this challenge. Info about those meetings will be sent via email to participants.

Prizes

The following actions generate entries into a raffle for our club challenge prizes. Prizes can be shipped to the United States; anyone outside the United States may have to pay for shipping for a prize. Prizes will be listed soon!

  1. Posting an announcement that you are joining the challenge on Instagram using the hashtag #aiartquiltclub23 is worth 1 entry into the prize drawing.
  2. Posting progress on Instagram once a month in March - November. Each post with the hashtag #aiartquiltclub23 is worth 1 entry. (If you do not use Instagram, you can email photos of your progress monthly to annamaria.mcgill.lu@gmail.com instead for entry.)
  3. Joining an official challenge virtual meeting is worth 1 entry per meeting attended.
  4. Finishing an AI quilt and sharing it through Instagram with the hashtag #aiartquiltclub23 is worth 5 entries. (If you do not use Instagram, you can email a photo of your finished quilt to annamaria.mcgill.lu@gmail.com instead for entry.)

Questions?

If you have any questions, please reach out to Annamaria Lu via email at annamaria.mcgill.lu@gmail.com or on Instagram @vidachrome.