Kestrel Michaud: AI Art & Quilting

Saturday – February 21, 2026 10:00am (Zoom)

Kestrel Michaud: AI Art & Quilting, what AI generated art is and how it could impact the quilting world.

(Zoom only)

AI Art & Quilting, what AI generated art is and how it could impact the quilting world.

AI generated art is a new technology that has taken the world by storm. Yet this new method of quickly creating works of art is controversial to say the least. In this lecture, you will learn:

• What AI generated art is

• How AI art is made

• What the wider art community thinks about AI art

• The controversy surrounding AI art generators

• Challenges facing the quilting community due to AI art

• Kestrel’s recommendation for ethically using AI art

About Kestrel: 

https://kestrelmichaud.com/

Kestrel Michaud is a classically-trained, imaginative realism fine artist with a passion for illustrating in fabric. She started working with fabric in 2004 as a Junior in high school. By the time she graduated in 2006, Kestrel had developed her own unique style and technique and had completed almost 30 unique fabric pictures.

All of Kestrel’s quilts are in the style of imaginative realism. Kestrel has an entire imaginary steampunk world in her head, complete with characters, locations, and events. Kestrel combines the lessons about visual storytelling she learned in college with her talent working with fabric to create quilts that tell stories from this fictional realm in a visual style that makes the imagery look real, even though it’s not.

Kestrel’s technical style is called fused, raw-edge appliqué, and her quilts are notably different from her early fabric pictures because the fabric pictures did not include stitching. Each quilt is comprised of hundreds or thousands of individual pieces of fabric, some even smaller than the tip of a fingernail. Kestrel cuts and assemble them like a puzzle made from overlapping pieces. Each piece of fabric is fused in place with a heat-sensitive fabric glue before being quilted at a density of 1/8”-1/16”. Kestrel stitches her designs by free-motion quilting, which means she moves the fabric under the needle of her sewing machine to “draw” lines out of thread.

Kestrel works as a full-time, professional quilt artist, exhibiting and selling her work around the world. She also shares her knowledge by teaching her process through Patreon, live and virtual lectures, and live workshops. In 2023, Kestrel was invited to be a guest on The Quilt Show and Quilting Arts TV. The former was published on July 30, 2023 (episode #3303). The latter aired on PBS in December 2023 (episodes 3001, 3003, 3007). Kestrel and her work have been featured in a number of magazines, including Quilting Arts Magazine, Quiltfolk, and Art Quilting Studio. Her work has graced the covers of bUneke magazine and the SAQA Journal. Her fine art training, creative mind, inventive nature, decades of experience, and unique style make Kestrel’s work unlike that of any other artist.