The most recent invasion of Ukraine started on February 24, 2022. We are now at day 1318.

For every day of the war, our project generates a unique quilt square based on an algorithm and generative art code written by creative coder and artist, Kirti Schoener.

Sponsor a quilt square and add your story to this digital memorial. Proceeds will be donated to Ukrainian support organizations.

This dynamic, generative project was inspired by Vyshyvanka, traditional Ukrainian embroidered clothing. The colorful embroidery is emulated in every square. A close-up view reveals intricate creatively-coded “stitches” that form the patterns.

When the war is over, a composite of all of the squares, one for each day, will form the final quilt. Each digital quilt square and the final digital quilt will be preserved as artwork NFTs, which can be resold or traded. Stories will be preserved on a distributed file system, but will not be tradeable.

FAQs

How does this help Ukraine?
How can I participate?
A specific date has special meaning to me. Can I add my story to it?
What kinds of stories may sponsors share?
Is the artwork collectible?
How do I sponsor a digital quilt square?
How do I add a story to my quilt square?
Where can I see the quilt with the stories?
What if I sponsor a square via PayPal but do not provide a wallet for transfer of the NFT?
How do I get an NFT wallet?
Why are you selling the quilt squares as NFTs?
Why are you selling sponsorships via PayPal if these are NFTs?
Is a day's square generated today different from the same day generated yesterday?
How many squares are in the collection?
Is the entire Ukraine Quilt collectible?
Where can I buy the NFTs that were not collected or are being sold by the current owner?
And finally, what is the story behind The Ukraine Quilt?

How does this help Ukraine?

Proceeds from sponsorships of the quilt story squares will be donated to support Ukraine. The use of funds will be:

- 90% to support Ukraine via:
- Pickup4Ukraine, an all-volunteer association that provides critically needed vehicles and supplies,
and
- UNITED24, President Zelenskyy's official fundraising initiative.
- 10% (maximum) for quilt squares, story, and website management, payment processing and marketplace transaction fees, cryptocurrency/NFT "gas", and marketing/promotion.

In the US, 90% of your donation is deductible as a charitable gift (10% is attributed to value received and is not deductible).

We expect to transfer funds from our non-profit's account to the beneficiaries weekly or monthly, depending on volume. We will post receipt information from the transfers.

How can I participate?

1 Sponsor a square
2 Add a story
3 (optional) Collect the square as a digital artwork NFT (non-fungible token)

A specific date has special meaning to me. Can I add my story to it?

Yes, if the square is still available for sponsorship.

What kinds of stories may sponsors share?

The story you add to your square is whatever you want it to be. It can be about a specific day, the invasion, in general, affected friends, or anything meaningful and relevant to you. You don't have to be a writer or journalist to help create this memorial. Your addition can be as short as a social media post or up to 5 pages (in image form). This is a public memorial so please consider that when deciding what to share.

Is the artwork collectible?

Yes. In addition to being able to add a story, as a sponsor, you are eligible to collect the day's digital quilt square image as an NFT.

How do I sponsor a digital quilt square?

Sponsor The Ukraine Quilt quilt squares here. After you contribute, you can upload your story and (if you choose to collect it) add a digital wallet to hold the NFT. You will need information from your PayPal confirmation to do either, so be sure to save it.

How do I add a story to my quilt square?

You will need the email address and order number from your PayPal order. Upload up to 5 images as your story here. My story is text, why do I need to upload images? Images preserve your formatting and language. You can use screenshots or convert a .pdf to images before uploading. You will own your story content, but will need to grant permission for it to be displayed/shared/distributed, etc. before uploading.

Where can I see the quilt with the stories?

coming soon

What if I sponsor a square via PayPal but don't want or don't provide a wallet for transfer of the digital image artwork (the NFT)?

Short answer: if you sponsor a square but don't provide a wallet, you will be able to add a story to the memorial but you won't own the artwork for the day.

Longer answer...
Your sponsor donation will be contributed as mentioned above.

And you will still be able to add your story. Each square can only have one sponsor and only the sponsor may add a story to the square for that date. You will need to add your story within 60 days.

The collectible portion of the quilt squares, the artwork images, are NFTs so you will need a cryptocurrency wallet that supports Ethereum layer-2 cryptocurrencies like Arbitrum (most do), to take possession of it. You do not need to buy crypto or insert any funds into the wallet to receive your NFT. It will be "airdropped" to your wallet at the project's expense. If you do not provide a wallet ID for the NFT edition of the square within 60 days of your contribution, the artwork that had been reserved for you will be sold and you will no longer be able to claim it. The person that buys the NFT will not be able to add a story for that day and will only own the artwork for that date.

How do I get an NFT wallet?

There are many NFT/crypto wallet solutions: software-based, like metamask.io and trustwallet.com or hardware-based, like ledger.com. Ledger offers an academic review of wallet types: https://www.ledger.com/academy/topics/crypto/how-to-create-an-ethereum-wallet. And MetaMask offers a guide to Web 3, wallets are part of lesson 2: https://learn.metamask.io/.

Whichever wallet solution you decide on, never share your seed phrase/keys with anyone. For transferring crypto or NFTs, the only thing you need to share is your public wallet ID. We will never ask for your secret phrase, and neither will genuine MetaMask or Ledger support. Watch out for scammers who say they need your seed phrase. They do not! Also, only purchase hardware wallets from the manufacturer, like Ledger, to ensure device integrity. Do not purchase via 3rd party marketplaces.

Why are you selling the quilt squares as NFTs?

The benefit of NFTs for this project is that the quilt square artwork will be stored on a blockchain, so visibility is not dependent on a specific website (whether ours or any other specific site-owner's). And, you - everyone - can verify the work's origin, transfers, current wallet holder, and buy, sell, and trade the squares, transparently. Provenance and transactions are transparent to everyone and escrow is built-in.

Our origin wallet ID will be shared here soon. Only this wallet can issue the NFTs for this project.

For holders, the main point - as with everything on the internet - is to find a trusted product and keep your private information (like passwords and seed phrases), private.

Also, if you choose to sell your NFT on a marketplace, your net proceeds (after fees and royalties, usually 5-15%) go directly into your wallet.

Why are you selling sponsorships via PayPal if these are NFTs?

- We realize that many people prefer buying on known marketplaces with fiat currency and do not have cryptocurrency wallets. We did not want to exclude them from adding their stories to this memorial, so we decided to create a way for them to participate, and claim an NFT later, if they wished.
- We are a recognized charitable organization on PayPal, which we hope gives buyers confidence in the project.
- This marketplace gives us a way to contact buyers about how to add their stories without collecting additional information to verify that they are the sponsor.
- We are donating time to create the generative art and code, manage the sponsorship and story platform, manage sales and communication with buyers - everything else - so using a trusted payment platform means one less thing to manage.

Is a day's square generated today different from the same day generated yesterday?

Each day’s square is generated based on a hash for that day. That hash is used by Kirti's creatively-coded program to create a unique square. So, the war’s Day 1 square generated today will look the same as Day 1 generated yesterday.

How many squares are in the collection?

A new digital square is added to the collection for every day that the war in Ukraine continues. The quilt will stop growing when the war ends. Squares become available for sponsorship shortly after the end of a calendar month.

Is the entire Ukraine Quilt collectible?

After the war ends, the final quilt will be generated. It will be a composite of all of the squares, in order, but possibly rotated or flipped, along with blue and yellow filler squares to form a rectangle. This composite version of The Ukraine Quilt (not including stories) will be auctioned as its own digital collectible. You will continue to own the NFT claimed for your square unless you sell or trade it. A portion of proceeds from primary NFT sales (i.e. from the creator) will be donated. Proceeds from NFT sales by other sellers may or may not be donated, at their discretion.

Where can I buy the NFTs that were not claimed or are being sold by the current owner?

If a square was sponsored but the NFT was not claimed, it will be listed for sale here: coming soon. Unclaimed NFTs will be listed in batches to avoid excess gas fees. Listing may be as soon as 1 day after the claim period has expired.

And finally, what is the story behind The Ukraine Quilt?

In early 2023, almost one year into the invasion, news of the senseless devastation and destroyed lives was constant. And even though I (Kirti, the artist) do not have a direct connection to Ukraine, global acts of tyranny, as well as stories of bravery, humanity, and disruption, were on my mind. At the same time, in my artistic capacity, I had been developing a project that revolved around generating unique patterns. I was struggling to develop a creative coding algorithm to satisfy my vision.

While following news about the invasion, I saw images of people wearing traditional clothing, and learned about Vyshyvanka, Ukrainian embroidery. I saw the intricate designs on blouses and other garments and the visuals immediately meshed with the pattern generation problem I had been mulling. It was then, with both current events and my coding challenge on my mind, that I had the idea for The Ukraine Quilt. The idea was that for every day that the war continued, a digital quilt square would be added to the virtual quilt. Each square would feature a unique pattern, one that appeared “stitched”, reminiscent of embroidery – of Vyshyvanka. I had still not solved the problem of generating patterns, but now I had a concrete, motivating application for my vision. This encouraged me to continue to work on a solution and after months of mulling and experimenting, I developed a way to do what I had envisioned.

By then I knew that I wanted the memorial to be more than an artwork. I wanted it to be a record of the invasion. I wanted to provide a way for people to share and preserve their experiences and narratives. But this presented a new challenge. I grappled with how to enable storytelling for each square and waffled between building a “traditional” website to capture and display stories and designing an NFT/Web3 solution to preserve the memorial on a blockchain. Each approach has its pros and cons, and I wanted features from both.

In the end, I concluded that an NFT-only solution would exclude too many people who might want to contribute to the memorial but were not prepared to use crypto. So, I decided on a hybrid approach: a temporary website for donations and stories, one for each square, that will eventually be preserved on a distributed file system, and NFTs for preservation and trading of the artwork, without the stories, for both the daily quilt squares, and eventually, the final quilt.

I hope that you will contribute to The Ukraine Quilt by sponsoring a quilt square and sharing your story. I look forward to building the quilt, the memorial, together.