Sample This! vs Filara

Experience the giant interactive sampler on the India Art Fair facade with augmented reality. Under "The Future is Born of Art" commission, the facade is envisioned as a giant sampler hosting motifs from embroidery traditions across the globe. Historically, samplers were tools used,often by women, to learn, practice, and pass on embroidery traditions. Today, this facade tells the story behind these motifs merging tradition and technology. Use the app to scan individual motifs to learn the meaning and cultural symbolism behind them. Simply point your camera at the facade and watch the sampler come alive with AR animations. Browse through the motif gallery and learn about the world of embroidery.

Filara is embroidery made with code. I write programs that draw a design one stitch at a time, and each design they come up with is sold once. Buy a piece and it gets stitched in thread on fabric and mailed to you. After that it's off the app for everyone else. There are five series right now: a garden sampler, landforms seen from above, a koi pond, birds, and one called Misprint, where two of the others burn through each other. Each shows 30 pieces at a time. Tap New and you get a different 30. Tap any piece to see it full screen and zoom in as far as you like. There's also a Physical view, which shows roughly how the piece will come out once it's down to the threads the machine uses. Tap a piece's title for the details: its palette, how many thread colors, how many stitches. The biggest ones pass 60,000. A piece is $100 and US shipping is included. They're made to order, so allow 1 to 2 months before yours ships. You don't need an account. Checkout goes through Stripe, and afterwards the app shows where your piece is, from order received to shipped. Right now every sale goes toward an embroidery machine of my own, so I can stitch the pieces myself instead of sending them out. The Journey page in the app shows how close that is.