Dee Teaches

Did you know that a handful of nails and a simple piece of thread once changed the way children learned math—and eventually shaped the art we hang on our walls today? What looks like a craft project has roots that reach deep into classrooms, culture, and even computer design.

It all began in the late 1800s with Mary Everest Boole, a mathematician who wanted kids to see geometry, not just study it. With thread and cardboard, she showed them how straight lines could bend into beautiful curves—a playful lesson that planted the seeds of what we now call string art. The art they would create is what we now call a Spirograph.

Her idea stretched further than she could have imagined. Those stitched curves inspired the math behind computer graphics, the smooth lines we see in animation, design, and digital art. By the 1960s, string art had left the classroom and found its way into living rooms. Craft kits with velvet boards and colorful thread turned it into a craze, while artists like Sue Fuller and Kazuko Miyamoto pushed it into galleries as bold, modern installations.

And yet, the story is older still—cultures around the world have used string for play and storytelling, from cat’s cradle to woven figures. Today, string art lives on, whether in DIY projects or futuristic computer-generated portraits. Each design we make is part of that long thread through history—one strand at a time.

For me, it makes perfect sense! While this is different than the type of string art that I do, the only math I ever excelled at was geometry. String art is geometry brought to life, a way to draw with thread instead of pencil. No wonder I fell in love with it.