The most recent invasion of Ukraine started on February 24, 2022. We are now at day 1510.

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. The final digital quilt will be preserved as an NFT and possibly auctioned. The stories and squares will be preserved on a distributed file system for long-term access.

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?
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?
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?
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, and marketing/promotion.

In the US, because we are a recognized non-profit, 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 Optional: Add a story

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

Yes, if it still available! Check here.

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.

How do I sponsor a digital quilt square?

Sponsor The Ukraine Quilt quilt squares here. After you contribute, you can upload your story. You will need information from your PayPal confirmation to do so, 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?

Squares with stories

Why are you using PayPal for sponsorships?

- 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 of a square.
- 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) may be auctioned as a digital collectible (NFT). A portion of proceeds from the primary NFT sale, if it occurs, will be donated.

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 website for donations and preservation of the daily squares and stories on a distributed file system, and an NFT for preservation and potential resale/trading of the final quilt artwork, without the stories.

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.