The Crossroads of AI and Quilting with Theresa

In this episode of Quilting on the Side, hosts Andi and Tori welcome Teresa, the AI Quilter, who shares her journey from the semiconductor industry to the world of quilting and artificial intelligence. Teresa discusses her passion for teaching AI concepts to various audiences, including quilters, and addresses the ethical concerns surrounding AI-generated art. 

She emphasizes the importance of understanding AI's capabilities and how it can enhance creativity without replacing the human touch. The conversation also covers marketing strategies for solopreneurs and concludes with rapid-fire questions that reveal Teresa's inspirations and insights into the quilting community.

Don’t miss an episode! Like, comment, and subscribe for more quilting stories, tips, and industry insights.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Teresa, the AI Quilter
04:42 The Journey into AI and Quilting
17:09 Ethics and Copyright in AI Art
23:55 Leveraging AI for Creative Processes
35:57 Marketing Tips for Solopreneurs
44:32 Rapid Fire Questions and Closing Thoughts

Connect with Theresa:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theaiquilter/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheAIQuilter 

Get her book, Digital Muse: Bringing AI Into Your Creative Process, and her patterns: https://theaiquilter.com/shop 

Heard about the Self Publishing Incubator? Click here to see more. 

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Co-Hosts:

Tori McElwain @heytori.tech

Andi Stanfield @truebluequilts

Transcript

ndi (01:11)
Welcome to another episode of Quilting on the Side. Tori and I are so excited for our discussion today. Meet the fabulous Teresa, the AI quilter. So glad to have you.

Theresa (01:24)
I'm so glad to be here. Thank you for having me. Thank you.

Andi (01:27)
Of course, and

we need you to do a quick introduction who you are, your business, and then tell us a little bit about how you started quilting.

Theresa (01:37)
Yeah, so again, I'm Teresa, the AI Quilter. ⁓ I have a few businesses. I have my AI Quilting business, which is primarily ⁓ teaching about artificial intelligence in the general ⁓ population. So I teach at libraries, community centers, ⁓ quilt guilds to a certain extent. But I also teach at

for businesses, small businesses who are thinking about utilizing AI and they're nervous about privacy or they're nervous about these different things. So ⁓ I come in and I talk at whatever level people need me to be at. If I'm talking with developers, that's an entirely different conversation than if I'm talking with creatives. And then I also run a management ⁓ consulting business and marketing business where I help

Companies of all sizes ⁓ operationalize everything from products to marketing strategy. ⁓ I most recently helped a company launch an entirely new product line. So I have a lot of fun doing that as well. so that is, those are sort of the two aspects of my business. ⁓ The AI Quilter also.

has patterns, know, notions that support the development of art quilts and things like that that I have found useful. I figure if I like them, why not provide them? And I make my own patterns. And then I published my first book and I'm working on my second one. So that's a little bit about my businesses. And then as far as how I got started quilting, it was actually a customer.

years and years and years ago, I'd moved to Portland, Oregon in 1997. And I don't know if you've heard, but it rains a little bit there. And, you know, I came from the Midwest. I'm from Iowa and I had never been an athlete. I've been a math elite, but not an athlete. And so I didn't have a lot of outdoor hobbies and a customer of mine

was complaining one day about his employees saying, Teresa, don't be like the rest of these kids. Cause I was in my twenties at the time. Don't be like the rest of these kids who worked for me. And I said, okay, sure. And he said, find a hobby with a beginning, a middle and an end, because you've spent the last 18 years starting, not knowing anything, learning it, mastering it and getting a gold star.

And then you get celebrated for that, right? There are all of these ceremonies, especially these days, there's graduations from all different stages of a school career, right? Back then it was junior high, high school, college, but you're celebrated for your mastery of these things and you're not shamed for not knowing when you get started in third grade, right? And you don't know your times tables yet.

Well, as an adult, you will never have that experience again. Like in work, if you're on a project and you're good at the middle part, you'll never see a project completion because somebody will pull you onto the next project to get it going and then the next project. And so you'll never have that satisfaction. So he said, get a hobby. And I had just met someone who was really into quilting.

And she was about my age and I had been a sewist up to that point, know, sewn my own clothes and whatever. I actually, my first job was at a fabric store. And so I thought, well, quilting has a beginning, a middle and an end. And I know I'm very terrible at it because I've never done it before. So there we go. And so that's how I got started quilting, was with my friend Anne Bather watching the first ever season of Survivor.

you know, she and I and Jeff Probst, we made quilts together, it was great. So, yeah, yeah.

Andi (05:53)
How fun, how fun.

Tori (05:56)
That's a wonderful story. I'm really curious, how did you get involved with AI?

Theresa (05:58)
Thank you.

So ⁓ apparently not knowing stuff and wanting to learn it is a big part of like who I am as a person. And so I was contemplating a career change. I had been primarily in the semiconductor industry for decades. And I have an electrical engineering background and ⁓

I had moved into industrial automation, which I had never done before. And I had been successful at that. And I was looking for what was next for me. And it was just before COVID. And I thought about going into software. I had never worked at a software company before. I had always worked with some aspect of hardware product, know, physical good. And so I went to work.

for a company that made decision automation software, which I had never heard of before. But it turns out it's a multi-billion dollar industry and ⁓ it touches every one of us every day, all day, everywhere. And so I went to work for this company and through my

my role there, I got to be part of two different acquisitions. We bought two different companies, and one was a machine learning platform, and one was a process automation platform. so decision automation is one aspect of AI. Decision automation is, ⁓ we all hear in the news, especially lately, ⁓ AI is everywhere, right?

And the thing of it is there are a million different flavors of the AI doing a million different things. so decision automation is one side, machine learning is another side. And so in my role, it was my job to be the technical expert who could sort of translate the technology into human speak. And so I got really fascinated by its application.

and the ethics around it. In fact, I wrote, I guess, wrote a few articles on the ethics of AI, ⁓ did a lot of speaking about artificial intelligence ⁓ being utilized in ⁓ decisions that relate to food, shelter, clothing, medical care and things like that. And it just sparked something in me. And so then I started figuring out, well,

OK, this is yet again something I don't know. What else can I do with AI? What is it? How does it work? Where did it come from? How long has it been around? And then how can I share what I'm learning with others? And I've never been able to draw a stick figure to save my life. I never will. I just know this about myself. But as generative AI became a thing in the zeitgeist,

⁓ type flavor of AI where you can create pictures from words. ⁓ I realized, my gosh, this is my moment. I can actually start to realize these ideas that I have in my head. And then as with everything, how can I help other people do the same thing? And so that's how, like you can see behind me, Audrey, it's kind of blurry, but that's Audrey Hepburn back there. ⁓ I realized, wow.

Andi (09:28)
Mm-hmm.

Theresa (09:33)
This is something I can help other people do. And so that's what I do now. That's a large part of what I do right now.

Andi (09:40)
Yeah, that's so, so interesting. And I'm just going to dive right in to one of those controversies because you mentioned all the ethical concerns. And I think that's where I know I have hesitated and probably a lot of other quilters because we are aware of copyright and this idea of wanting to be original and respect other people's

artistic vision, intellectual property, all those concerns. So take that and run with it. What do you have to say about that?

Theresa (10:15)
Yeah, here you go.

Here's this big gnarly thing, Teresa, boil it down. Make it easy, right? Yeah, yeah. So yeah, no, it's big thing to be concerned about, but at the same time, we shouldn't be as concerned as folks. With every new technology in the world, the alarmists come out. And rightfully so, because there are kernels of truth in the alarm.

Andi (10:20)
Right? Right.

Theresa (10:45)
Right? But even, you know, when the camera became more commercially viable back in the, you know, way, way back, ⁓ know, portrait painters thought that their lives were over and that there would never be a reason for them anymore. And then there was a whole other camp that said, gosh, you know, that's the lazy way out, you know, all you have to do is press a button. And it's like, OK, but Ansel Adams

Photography and my photography are two wildly different things. ⁓ So when it comes to copyright, let's talk about that. So ⁓ one of the big things that is important to me is teaching people about how AI actually works, which we can't get into here. But ⁓ suffice to say, ⁓ there are unethical actors out there.

who especially in the early days of commercializing generative AI, which is the AI that's used to create images and text and that sort of thing, they would ⁓ rather than compensating ⁓ artists for their work, they would take the watermarked images from like iStock Photo, Getty Images, Dreams Time and other platforms

They just sucked down all of the watermarked images and use those images in their training data. There were a number of platforms that did this. And early generative AI ended up having a problem in that ⁓ you would go to generate an image and there'd be weird artifacts in the resultant image because these are simply computer programs. And so if every image of an ice cream cone

has blobby bits all over it, which actually say, you know, eye stock photo, eye stock photo, eye stock photo, or I talk about in my book, early generated images of David Beckham always had a gray blob somewhere on his body, typically near his legs. Like that was a thing in the beginning. And it was because Getty images had the largest library of pictures of David Beckham.

And Getty Images watermark is a big large gray bar that says Getty Images on it. And so to an AI platform, apparently David Beckham's legs. Yes, there are these two flesh colored things, know, peach colored things, but then apparently he has a gray thing near his knees. ⁓ so, yeah, early on it was a real problem. But over time, pretty quickly, the

the bad actors have been sussed out. The market is teaching the platforms what they'll accept. And most ethical ⁓ users of AI are looking for copyright protected art, are looking for things that they can use and feel good about. And so Adobe most recently, ⁓ they announced

that all of their AI images come with some form of license right out the gate so that you can feel comfortable and confident that the artists whose work was used to be trained on ⁓ were fairly compensated for their work. Now, here's the thing. ⁓ And this is something that I spent a lot more time talking about. ⁓

The AI, generative AI, every image that's created has never existed before. So we are not creating a copycat of someone else's image when we say that we would like a picture of ⁓ David Bowie as, or Princess Diana as David Bowie on the cover of one of his albums. ⁓ That has never existed until the moment that you hit enter and it generates the image.

⁓ Now, where I have changed my tack and I talk a lot about in the book is I no longer use ⁓ recently passed or still living people as subjects of my art because I started to realize, hang on, these people are still walking around. This is not okay. So that's number one. ⁓ Number two,

I no longer say I want a picture of Princess Leia if it was painted by Picasso because what am I actually really doing there? I'm trying to mimic someone. And while the concept is my own, it's not doing the work of understanding the movements at the time that Picasso was creating art, right?

And so if I purport to be ethical in what I do, then I need to do the work. And so ⁓ just like a writer, when they go to university, they study Shakespeare, they study Herman Melville, they study Nathaniel Hawthorne, they study all of these great writers and they read their work to develop a concept of how to write a story, right? ⁓

AI does that on a massive scale. It reads every work ever written, right? And it understands story arc. Same with works of art. ⁓ An artist, when they go to school, they learn what Cubism is. They study the works of Picasso. They study Fauvism. They study Matisse. They study all of these things. Well, so does AI. And so this alarm

that people are sounding around, it's copying, ⁓ it's stealing, ⁓ it's these things, hang on, no, no. Artists also study other artists' work. Artists also go to school to study the Renaissance, to study how ⁓ portrait artists made eyes that look like they're following you when you walk. ⁓

they learned all of these techniques, so does AI. It's just it does it on a scale we've never seen before. And it's encroaching into a territory that I think a lot of people have felt was sacred, you know? And so ⁓ it's leveling the playing field for someone like me who has never been able to

draw a stick figure to save my life. It's leveling this playing field, but it is up to me to understand the rules of the game so that I don't copy, so that I do truly create an image or the beginnings of a quilt from a place that is truly mine and not me just

wanting to copy and sort of ride the coattails of a famous artist? Long answer, but it's a big problem.

Andi (18:27)
Yeah.

Yeah, no, but you, you explained it very well. And, I, I think you're right that there's all these alarmists out there saying, you know, this is terrible. And when you frame it using older technology, like you said, the, the, an oil and the

Theresa (18:48)
camera. Yeah, an oil.

Yeah.

Andi (18:50)
Yeah,

humans have dealt with these ethical dilemmas and have managed to find a way forward in the past.

Theresa (18:59)
Yes,

yes. I mean, the invention of the sewing machine, right? There were early inventions of sewing machines that people actually refused patents. Like they themselves felt bad that they had done it because they felt they were going to put a bunch of seamstresses out of work. What actually happened is the nature of work changed, you know? And similarly, like think about pantographs, right? Like fully automated quilting.

of a single thing across, right? ⁓ that's gonna put the custom quilter out of business. No, it's not. It's just going to provide different levels of what's okay. know, like for someone who just needs to ⁓ get a relatively inexpensive quilt out the door and is fine with an all over pantograph, you know, that ⁓

comes from the local quilt shop versus that person in my quilt guild who I know will take their time and is worth the money to fully custom quilt my quilts. Those are different offerings and it's both okay. And look at all of the oohs and ahs that the hand quilting still gets at quilt shows, right? There is a place at the table for everybody. And if somebody thinks

that there isn't, then they just need to buy a bigger table. They need to understand that, no, really, there is a bigger table. There really is a place for all of us, yeah.

Andi (20:38)
Another quilt related example, as you were talking about these different styles and how you can train generative AI to produce something in a certain style, how many people have done Baltimore album quilts? That is a specific style of applique and that's okay.

Theresa (20:52)
Mm-hmm.

That's okay, exactly, or collage quilting, right? There's a place at the table for both Emily Taylor and Laura Heine, and me, and others, right? Like, ⁓ it's really, Marina Landy is another amazing example of a collage quilter. All of those are perfect, it's okay. And, you know, we all, yeah, we all have a place at the table, but sometimes there's a...

a feeling of scarcity, especially as the world gets bigger, right? If I was the only collage culture in the Chicagoland area, well then I would be amazing and famous in the Chicagoland area. And then Marina would be amazing and famous in Brazil and Laura would be amazing and famous. But because the internet has allowed us all to make the world our marketplace, suddenly it feels like we're competing.

when in fact it's more like cooperation, right? Like we're all, it's not competition and it's not full cooperation. It's this thing in between where we are all leveling up the work while doing it our own special way. And there will be a market for my stuff and there will be a market for someone else's stuff and someone else's stuff. So.

Andi (22:21)
Yeah. And

Tori and I talk about that a lot too. ⁓ Because just like you said, people worry that, ⁓ I'm doing this thing that's not brand new. But different people respond to different offerings, even if they have the same basic thing. It's like, do you want to go to McDonald's or Wendy's? ⁓

Theresa (22:44)
Exactly, and

if you look at a ton of the patterns that are out there, we recently moved and I had two boxes just full of quilt magazines. so I've been, know, because quilt magazines were the thing before Pinterest, right? Instagram. And I can't let go of some of them. And so I've been tearing and organizing and doing the thing. And, you know, how many quilts are, you know, Ohio Star?

you know, Monkey Wrench, Drunkard's Path, whatever, but it's how that, ⁓ that quilt pattern writer selected their colors and laid things out, right? Like, ⁓ we are all building on what was to build what's next. None of us are inventing, I mean, all of us have the capacity to invent a new quilt block, don't get me wrong, but

for the most part, it's really about how these quilt blocks are being put together in new ways that are ⁓ creating these new quilt patterns that are for sale by all of us. And yeah, and so the alarm around copyright, the alarm around art theft and AI is against artists and AI is stealing and all of this stuff, I get the emotion and I empathize with it all.

⁓ But just like Microsoft Excel didn't replace accountants and the calculator didn't ⁓ stop all of us from still learning fractions because you have to know that, you know, ⁓ five divided by eight is 0.625 if you're ever going to use a calculator at a quilt shop, right? And so just like all of that,

never fully replaced that. AI will never fully replace that creative spark that's inside all of us. It just won't. It'll just accelerate, enhance, or like in my case, bring to life these ideas that I have that I can't get out in a different way.

Tori (25:08)
Speaking of which, think that is...isn't that the subject of your book, Digital Muse?

Theresa (25:13)
huh, exactly,

exactly. Yes, yes. Thank you. It is. It's all about, ⁓ so it definitely has a quilting lens to it, but it's really for creatives of all stripes, right? Whether you're a writer or a poet or a quilter or a artist, a digital artist, there's stuff in here for you. Yeah, it's all about how might you ⁓ leverage AI to

Inform your creative process. Like where can it live in what you're trying to do? It is not an all or nothing proposition. Like let's say you just don't get how colors go together and you don't understand the magic that other quilters that you know in your quilt guild or whatever, they just can magically put stuff together. Well, AI can help you with that. Or let's say you are

you know, a pattern writer, and you're trying to come up with a name for this pattern that you've come up with. you know, everything that you're coming up with is ho-hum. Well, okay, AI can help you with that. Or let's say you want to make a quilt that is Princess Leia in a Cubist style. I don't know. Hey, I...

You can absolutely do that. that's what my book, it starts out unlike what I see a lot of on the internet, which is here, type this prompt in and you'll be able to do X, right? The way I prefer to teach because I believe people fear what they don't understand is here is the history of AI. It's been around for 70 years, you guys.

70 years it's been around. AI didn't just show up five years ago. So here's a history of AI. Then here's how AI actually learns. Because if you don't know how it learns, then when you ask it for something, you're going to get a wildly different result than what you expected. Right? Like if I say I want a picture of a hot dog, well, is that a good looking golden retriever?

Is that a very warm beagle on a summer day or is it Chicago's favorite food? I don't know. you know, like, so I go into how it's taught and then I start breaking down exactly how to craft your prompts. And I even talk about like, why is it called prompts? They're called prompt, like think of improv. You know, have two actors on stage and you prompt them.

with the beginning of a scene. You are two astronauts at a drive-through on Mars. Let's say that's your prompts, you know? And now Ryan Stiles and Drew Carey have to go improv that. Well, AI works very similarly. You're giving it a prompt. You're starting, you are the creative spark. And so in the book then I teach people not just use this prompt, but instead here's

how to craft your prompt with the knowledge of how AI works so that you actually get what you want on the other side. And for people who are concerned about the environment and the impacts of AI on the environment, hey, that helps them too because every request we make to any software, including the platform you're recording on or we post on Facebook or we write a Google Doc,

every one of those is using a data center somewhere. And so if you want to be efficient about the prompts that you request of AI, well then learn how to craft them. The same way we learned what two plus two is. Jane has two apples, Sally has two apples. How many apples do they collectively have? Right? We had to learn that before we could be more efficient with our phones or do it in our heads. Similarly,

Learn how it works, learn the history of it, and then you'll be more successful and more efficient.

Tori (29:37)
I'm really curious how you developed your book. Did you go through a publisher or did you self-publish?

Theresa (29:43)
I self-published.

I self-published. Yeah, heck yeah. Come on. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. No, I self-published. I actually, ⁓ it was really funny. I had started ⁓ like starting to teach at Guilds. I had only at that point done one lecture and two classes.

Andi (29:47)
All three of us are on this self-publishing train.

Theresa (30:13)
But ⁓ I had someone who really believed in me who was like, you need to do this. And then my local library started having me in to teach about quilting and free motion quilting and color theory and all of these different things. And I kept on having this person going, you need to write a book. You need to write a book. And so actually in the beginning of my book, I just happened to have a copy here.

I had always wanted to write. I had wanted to be a high school English teacher. Don't get it. I did not want to be an electrical engineer. I wanted to be a high school English teacher, but hey. And so I literally wrote in the forward, I said, this was dedicated to my younger self who played school when other kids played house, because I did. I played school. I taught an invisible classroom.

Then I pretended I was a student. Then I did the homework. I assigned my students. Then I graded the home. I was come on, ⁓ played school and other kids played house and who wrote the epic two book series, Harriet the Talking Horse and Ollie the Olive and Sister Alberta and second grade reading class. Sorry, it took me so long to remember your dreams like I had always wanted to write a book. And and so this friend of mine just kept on saying, Teresa, just do it.

Come on, just do it. I'm like, nobody will want to read what I write. And I did it and it's been amazing. It's been just lovely. It was hard. was, you know, having a full-time job and trying to get this off the ground and write a book, but a hundred percent worth it. And I sometimes sit down to look at it. ⁓

and look for the flaws, right? We're all quilters, right? You know every seam that doesn't line up. You know every point that isn't pointy, right? In every quilt. So I keep on looking for that in this book and I'm just so delighted. I can't find them. I can't find the wonky seams in my book. It just, it brings me so much joy. It really does.

Andi (32:26)
that's great. That's great. Now you mentioned you had some marketing experience. What are just a couple quick tips that you can give to our solopreneurs about how to best get their new offers seen?

Tori (32:28)
So I would.

Theresa (32:43)
Yeah, so ⁓ you have to, so yeah, I'm a vice president of marketing at a technology company in addition to some of other stuff I do. So ⁓ be consistent. Don't be ashamed or afraid or timid. ⁓ You are your product. You like, ⁓ it is, and I'm telling you all of this.

fully recognizing that for like the last six, eight months while I was trying to get my client's product out the door, I neglected my own marketing. ⁓ But ⁓ you are your product and you need to talk about it. You need to talk about yourself. You need to talk about your book. You need to not be shy. You need to occasionally

You know the whole, need to spend money to make money. Sometimes you really do. You do need to buy ad space or just bravely go out and say, hey, can I write a guest blog about this? see you have some, you do collage quilts. Can I write a blog about facts for your website? Right? You like get creative, get scrappy, join groups.

that lift each other up in terms of like, you know, ⁓ other quiltpreneurs who, you know, listen to this podcast, holy crap. I've learned so much from listening to you guys. So, but do the work, do the work. And for me, it's honestly really, really hard to market myself. It's so much easier to market anything but me, you know?

Andi (34:19)
Thank you.

Hahaha ⁓

Theresa (34:36)
Because I just keep on hearing my mom in the back of my head like, ⁓ sh-

You know, nobody likes a bragger. It's like, no, no, no, no, but you gotta be proud of what you've done, you know? Yeah.

Andi (34:47)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And in that,

I think, I think that attitude is really going to change a lot just because our society has changed so much. And there are so many small businesses now that, you know, we have to self promote. There's, there's no marketing department out here to talk about us for, for that. So just do it.

Theresa (35:14)
Exactly.

Be brave. Be brave. I always put at the end of my presentations, ⁓ be brave enough to suck at something new. You're not going to get it right. ⁓ I've read and listened to enough podcasts. A lot of us go through fight, ⁓ flight, freeze, spawn, all of those different things. I freeze a ton.

the instant I start getting noticed at all, my immediate reaction is to ignore my inbox, ⁓ stop being active, forgetting to post on a particular day or whatever. And it is a psychological thing of mine. And so as you think about your own reaction to stuff, you know,

put guardrails in place. If you know that about yourself, well then do like have a little mini reward on the other side of doing the hard thing, right? So that ⁓ you get through the hard part because you're about to get this fun thing as a reward. ⁓ just be honest with yourself. Be honest with yourself about ⁓ what your skills are and what they aren't.

and shore them up the best you can.

Tori (36:45)
Well, in the spirit of that conversation, I would love to add that I am hosting a self publishing incubator for anybody who is really curious about self publishing. I have put together a group of ladies who can help you get yourself published. So we have a content editor, a tech editor for quilt patterns and me as your marketing expert and accountability host. So if you are curious about self publishing and something stopping you, you can I'll link this below so you can go and look at our offer and see if it's going to work for you.

Beep!

Theresa (37:15)
brilliant! Do

Andi (37:16)
I'm

Theresa (37:16)
it!

Whoever's listening or watching, do it! Yes! Yes! Don't do it in a vacuum! That's awesome! It is! It is! ⁓

Tori (37:23)
Yes, it's very hard to do the vacuum.

Andi (37:23)
Yeah. Yeah,

great. Well, Teresa, this has been such a stimulating conversation. Thank you so much for taking the time. But we do have to transition into our rapid fire series that we ask all our guests the same questions.

Theresa (37:43)
Sorry, that was me getting excited.

Andi (37:45)
Yeah, Teresa has some great pre-programmed graphics that she was showing on screen, so hop over to our YouTube channel if you missed that. ⁓ We like to make the favorite color question and spin it a little bit. So what color do you struggle to use in your quilting?

Theresa (38:05)
yellow.

Andi (38:06)
We had another guest recently say the same thing.

Theresa (38:11)
Mm

hmm. Yellow. It's very difficult. It dominates, you know. ⁓ Funny enough, though, I have a ton of yellow fabric. ⁓ But yeah, yellow, you really, it is a sparkle fabric. is, you know, unless like the person you're making the quilt for or the purpose of the quilt requires yellow. Oddly enough, my Princess Diana quilt, her entire face is yellow and hot pink. But

You know, yellow, for sure.

Andi (38:42)
Yeah, that's funny because I was just at a color lecture recently and they said that yellows like the understudy. Red is the main character and yellow really wants that spotlight. So you have to be careful with those.

Theresa (38:58)
Yes, yes,

absolutely, yeah.

Tori (39:03)
Second question is do you prefer yardage or pre-cuts?

Theresa (39:07)
neither. I'm a fat quarter girl. So I guess that's a pre-cut, but you know, like I bought a layer cake recently and I don't have a clue what to do with it. Although when I was going through the magazines, unpacking, I found ⁓ a layer cake quilt pattern that I'm going to try, but no, I'm a fat quarter girl. ⁓ I travel a lot for my work.

Andi (39:10)
Hahaha

Theresa (39:36)
And I've lived in China briefly, lived in Sweden briefly. And wherever I go, I find quilt shops and I feel a little bit like a squirrel, you know, collecting up for winter. And the only yardage I buy is for backing, really, unless I'm just in love with a fabric that, you know, I must have a yard of, but yeah, fat quarters.

Andi (40:00)
Yeah,

I like the variety you can get with fat quarters because I'm definitely a scrappy quilter. so if a project calls for two yards of something, I want to make sure that it has at least eight different shades for that two yards.

Theresa (40:16)
Exactly. Exactly.

Yeah. Well, ⁓ so, you know, I teach a color theory class ⁓ where I teach how to organize your fabric for color success. ⁓ And so I have all of my fabric binned into one of 24 colors. And then I have my blacks, whites, and neutral grays in their own spot. And so any pattern, any time I can just go, okay, I really want to use this thing.

And then all color is, is math. It's all math. It's wavelengths of light, right? That our eyeballs can see. And so I'm an engineer. It's all math. So I can take number 13 and I know what it's going to go with in a hot second. And I just go grab those bins. And so I sort all my fat quarters that way. It's magic.

Tori (41:07)
I have never heard colors math. I think that's really interesting.

Andi (41:07)
So. ⁓

Theresa (41:09)
It is color is math.

it's it's it's wavelengths of light. And yeah, it's they're all it's all math. How how they work together is a mathematical equation. Like and

Andi (41:21)
And so

there's our topic for when you come back, Theresa, is how to get over the math phobia in our society. Because I know you just gave us so many people a heart attack because they don't want to do any math, but it's okay, people. can.

Theresa (41:29)
YES!

Okay, it

is okay, it is okay, I've got a million tips and tricks.

Tori (41:41)
That's gonna be spinning in my head all day. I'm gonna be like color is not I'm gonna look at everything going color is not

Theresa (41:47)
color is math. It is. And there's a whole thing. Yeah, we could tie. Please have me back and I will tell you why stoplights are red and exit signs outside the United States are green. There is a scientific, yeah, no, exit signs outside. Your face is so funny. Exit signs outside are green. Sorry. Yeah.

Andi (41:53)
Yes.

Rabbit hole. ⁓

Tori (42:12)
I know we're going down a run. I went to France and it was green and it threw me off. that's,

you're right. Anyway, okay. Next, next, Dafford fire before we lose track here. What is your favorite notion?

Theresa (42:24)
God bless. ⁓ Okay, I need to, the Quick Clip doohickey for pinning, pin basting quilts. ⁓ That thing is magic and has saved my fingernails, ⁓ you know, and the calluses on my thumb. I would say that's right up there. ⁓ Yeah, there you go.

Andi (42:46)
That is

a great tool.

Who is inspiring you? Who is inspiring you right now, Teresa?

Theresa (42:58)
my gosh. ⁓

Be Sa-Butler always and forever. ⁓ Like even just speaking her name, sometimes I just get overcome with the beauty and meaning in her quilts. She is just a remarkable artist. ⁓ And Karlee Porter, honestly. Karlee Porter is just a remarkable human being.

speaking the truth about our industry and and helping people know their worth when it comes to charging for things and whatever and Yeah, I wish I could I wish I could be a little bit more like Karlee some days

Tori (43:53)
fun fact Karlee... it's a fun fact that Karlee Porter actually gave me an idea for the self-publishing incubator. She's the one that dropped the idea on me at Quilt Con when I met her and I just kind of ran with it. She's like you need to do this and I was like okay.

Andi (43:53)
Those are two fabulous examples.

Theresa (44:11)
Porter changed part of my book. Yes. So she got to see an early copy. And and she's like, Hey, have you thought about and I'm like, that's brilliant. So there we go. Karlee Porter.

Tori (44:15)
Really?

Andi (44:27)
Yep, props to Karlee.

Tori (44:31)
Next question is, what is the most rewarding part of your business?

Theresa (44:38)
my goodness. It just immediately, it's these light bulb moments for ⁓ the population I serve. So. ⁓

Andi (44:39)
Hahaha

Theresa (44:54)
Man, why am I getting emotional? But it really is important to me. So it's not so much the moment that people understand whatever it is I'm teaching. There is a micro moment just before that that I can see. It is physical and I see it. Where they realize whatever tapes were in their head that I'm dumb, I'm not technical, I can't do this, I can't, I can't, I can't.

Andi (44:55)
you

Theresa (45:22)
because of whatever garbage is going on in all of our heads, all of our negative self-talk, there is a moment just before the moment where they get whatever the concept is, where I see their face change and they're no longer frowning and they're no longer sort of closed off and they let go just a little bit and then the aha happens. It's that moment just before the aha. And when they come up to me after and they're like, I...

Andi (45:44)
you.

Theresa (45:50)
cannot wait to tell my kid, my grandkid, my, you know, like that I know this thing, right? Like that.

That is, that just means the world to me. It means the absolute world to me to, I feel like I'm helping give people a little bit of their esteem back, you know, that, hey, I can do this. So.

Andi (46:20)
Thank you so much. Yeah, that's wonderful.

Tori (46:20)
love that. And we have

one last question. How many quilts are in the room with you right now?

Theresa (46:24)
Okay.

Andi (46:33)
She's looking around.

Theresa (46:34)
There, I have,

because I have a bunch folded up, you know, because I do, we'd be on camera. So there's, yeah. So in this room, which is my office and not where I sew, I've got five. And then I've got three projects, like new patterns that I'm designing up on the walls behind the camera. So no fabric, but they are going to be quilts. So, yeah.

Andi (47:02)
Good, good, good. Yeah, and we've really enjoyed seeing ⁓ your Audrey quilt over your shoulders. So definitely another ⁓ reminder to people to check out YouTube so you can see these things. ⁓ Remind people where they can find you, Teresa.

Theresa (47:09)
Thank you.

Yeah! Yeah!

am at theaiquilter.com. I'm also out on Instagram at theaiquilter. I've got a YouTube channel at theaiquilter. I'm also on Facebook. And we have a free thing called the AI Quilt Guild where there's some extra bonus posts where I talk about AI a little bit more and answer questions about how it works. So yeah.

That's where you can find me or, know, libraries, especially around the Chicagoland area. I'm often teaching and doing working sessions.

Andi (48:00)
Great, and I did see a recent post. You're gonna be ⁓ a teacher at QuiltCon in 2026, so congratulations. Hopefully you run out of our ⁓ community there. Wonderful. ⁓

Theresa (48:05)
I am.

Thank you!

Yes,

yes, yes. And ⁓ I am also going to be wandering around at Quilt Market in Houston in October. I'm not teaching this year, but ⁓ I will have varieties of the t-shirt I'm wearing ⁓ on. So check out YouTube to see it. But yeah, come say hi. I would love to talk to people.

Andi (48:37)
Yeah, and Teresa, this has been just such a stimulating conversation. So many avenues to explore this intersection of technology and quilting. So thank you so much for your time today, and we look forward to future conversations.

Tori (48:37)
Are you going to?

Theresa (48:53)
Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.