That thought kept running through my mind as I prepared to present a TurtleStitch workshop at FAB26, the annual international conference of the Fab Lab network. This year's conference was held at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), bringing together educators, makers, artists, engineers, and innovators from around the world.
As I looked around the campus, I realized I wasn't simply teaching a workshop. I was teaching TurtleStitch in the very place where the story of the turtle began more than fifty years ago.
It was here at MIT that Seymour Papert, Cynthia Solomon, Marvin Minsky, Wally Feurzeig, Danny Bobrow, and their colleagues imagined a new way for children to learn through computers. Their work gave us Logo. And Logo gave us a little turtle, a turtle that has inspired generations of learners to explore mathematics, programming, and creative thinking.
That turtle never stopped moving.
Over the decades, it traveled from classroom floors to computer screens. Today, it has found a new trail in TurtleStitch. Instead of drawing with a pen or pixels, it stitches with thread. The medium has changed, but the spirit remains the same.
Even more meaningful, I had the privilege of teaching this workshop alongside Cynthia Solomon, one of the pioneers who helped bring Logo and the turtle into classrooms. Standing beside her in the same halls where these ideas first took shape made the experience especially memorable.
This is the story of the turtle and the many new trails it has made for over 50 years.
Where the Story Begins
Every story has a beginning, and the story of the turtle begins with a simple but powerful idea:
Children learn best when they can see their thinking take shape in the world.
That idea took root at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1963, when Marvin Minsky, one of the pioneers of artificial intelligence, invited Seymour Papert to join him at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.
Although they came from different disciplines, they were asking surprisingly similar questions. Minsky wanted to understand whether machines could be made to think. Papert, having studied with the developmental psychologist Jean Piaget in Switzerland, wanted to understand how children learn. He believed that knowledge is not simply passed from teacher to student. Instead, children build understanding by actively exploring, experimenting, and creating.
As the two men shared ideas, they discovered something remarkable. The principles that describe how machines learn and how children learn had striking similarities. Their conversations would eventually spark one of the most influential ideas in educational computing.
The Birth of Logo
From those conversations grew Logo, one of the first programming languages designed specifically for children. Beginning in 1966, Seymour Papert, Wally Feurzeig, and Cynthia Solomon worked together to develop a language that would encourage exploration rather than memorization. Feurzeig chose the name Logo, derived from the Greek word logos, meaning "word" or "thought."
Logo was inspired by the programming language Lisp, but its purpose was entirely different. Rather than training professional programmers, it became a mathematical playground where children could experiment, solve problems, and discover patterns for themselves.
During the 1968–69 school year, Logo was introduced to students at Muzzey Junior High School in Lexington, Massachusetts. At a time when computers were rare and extraordinarily expensive, students used teletypes connected by telephone lines to a time shared computer at Bolt, Beranek and Newman. Despite the limitations of the technology, something extraordinary was happening. Children were beginning to learn mathematics, programming, and problem solving in a completely new way.
The Turtle Makes Its First Trail
In 1969, the turtle finally appeared.
It wasn't much to look at. Built from salvaged parts that Marvin Minsky found in a Department of Defense surplus yard, the first turtle was a small yellow robot that rolled across the floor on three wheels. A pen mounted underneath left a trail on large sheets of paper as it moved. Connected by a cable to a PDP-10 time-sharing computer running Logo, it faithfully carried out every command it was given.
Its slow, deliberate movement reminded Seymour Papert of the small autonomous robots created in England by the neurophysiologist William Grey Walter. Walter had called his robots tortoises, a name that reflected both their rounded, shell-like appearance and their calm, purposeful way of exploring the world around them.
Papert loved the idea, but he chose a name that would feel more familiar to American children. Instead of a tortoise, it became a turtle.
That simple change gave Logo something more than a robot. It gave children a companion.
With just a handful of commands - forward, back, left, and right - children could guide the turtle across the floor. As it moved, it transformed their ideas into visible trails. A square appeared. A spiral emerged. A triangle became a star. Simple instructions, repeated and combined, produced patterns that were both mathematical and beautiful.
For the first time, children could watch their thinking unfold one step at a time.
The turtle had made its first trail.
The Turtle Finds a Second Home
By 1970, the turtle had found two homes.
One was the classroom floor, where a small robot rolled across large sheets of paper, leaving a trail of ink behind it. The other was the computer screen.
The display turtle appeared as a simple triangle or arrowhead on a glowing monitor, showing both its position and the direction it faced. Like its robotic cousin, it responded to the same familiar commands - forward, back, left, and right. Wherever it traveled, it left a trail behind it. The only difference was that the trail was now made of light instead of ink.
The logic was the same. The turtle had simply found another trail.
For children, this changed everything.
A program typed on a keyboard, itself a new experience for most students, became movement on a screen almost instantly. There was no waiting for a robot to finish drawing or for paper to be unrolled across the floor. The entire design appeared before their eyes, and if something didn't work, they could change the program and try again.
Fifth graders in Lexington, Massachusetts using an Execuport terminal connected over a phone line computer to a Supernova computer at MIT
Programming was no longer about memorizing commands. It became a process of exploration and discovery.
Children learned mathematical ideas by watching them unfold in motion. They experimented with angles, distances, repetition, and patterns. Geometry was no longer something confined to a textbook. It moved, turned, and grew before their eyes as the turtle faithfully followed every instruction.
The turtle had found a second home, and with it, a new trail that would introduce generations of children to the joy of mathematical thinking.
Cynthia Solomon Brings the Turtle to Life
The turtle was an ingenious invention, but by itself it did not transform education. That required someone who understood not only the technology, but also how children learn.
That person was Cynthia Solomon.
When the floor turtle was first introduced into a seventh grade mathematics classroom, the results were disappointing. The teacher approached Logo as another subject to be taught. Students memorized commands and learned the language, but they never discovered what made it special.
Cynthia Solomon immediately recognized the problem.
The power of Logo was never in learning commands. It was in learning through exploration.
When she took over the classroom, everything changed. Instead of giving students step by step instructions, she invited them to experiment. They tried ideas, watched what happened, made changes, and tried again. Mistakes were not failures. They were part of the learning process.
The turtle rolled freely across large sheets of paper as students gathered around to watch their ideas come to life. A few simple commands became geometric patterns, surprising discoveries, and moments of excitement. Mathematics was no longer something found only in a textbook. It emerged naturally through making, testing, and creating.
Cynthia Solomon teaching programming at Muzzey Jr. High, 1968 - 69
The turtle had become much more than a machine.
It had become a partner in thinking.
For her pioneering work, Cynthia Solomon is widely recognized as one of the founders of educational technology. She did more than help create Logo. She demonstrated how a simple turtle, guided by curiosity and imagination, could change the way children learn.
A Foundation for What Came Next
Logo was never just a programming language.
It was a philosophy.
It reflected the belief that children are capable of deep, meaningful thinking when they are given the right tools and the freedom to explore. The turtle made that thinking visible, first in trails of ink across classroom floors and later in trails of light across computer screens.
For more than fifty years, the turtle continued to make new trails, inspiring generations of learners to discover mathematics, programming, and creative thinking through exploration.
Then it found another path.
The Turtle Finds a New Trail in Thread
At first glance, the idea seems almost obvious.
If a turtle can draw a line, why not let it stitch one?
But like many simple ideas, this one required someone to see a connection that others had not yet imagined. That insight came from Andrea Mayr Stalder, who recognized a natural bridge between two worlds that had long existed apart: turtle graphics and embroidery.
Andrea's work grew out of a deep interest in textiles, art, and open source software. When she first encountered an embroidery machine, she became curious about how designs were created and how new patterns might be generated. Rather than seeing the machine as a tool for reproducing existing designs, she imagined it as something much more creative - a machine that could respond to instructions and generate original work.
The connection to the turtle followed naturally.
The turtle had always drawn by moving through space, leaving a trail behind it. Thread, in this sense, is simply another kind of trail. Wherever the turtle goes, a line appears. Whether that line is made of ink on paper, pixels on a screen, or thread on fabric, the underlying idea remains exactly the same.
Andrea had not changed the turtle.
She had simply given it a new trail to follow.
TurtleStitch first took shape in 2008 in Vienna, where Andrea Mayr Stalder began exploring the intersection of code and textiles in collaboration with fashion designer Dominique Raffa. In its early years, TurtleStitch was used primarily for artistic projects, demonstrating that embroidery could be generated through algorithms rather than traditional pattern design.
Those early experiments revealed something remarkable.
The turtle was just as expressive with thread as it had been with a pen on paper or pixels on a screen.
In 2014, TurtleStitch entered a new chapter. It was relaunched with a renewed focus on education, extending the ideas first developed through Logo into classrooms and makerspaces. Once again, children could learn mathematics, programming, and creative thinking by making something of their own. Only now, their ideas emerged as embroidered designs.
The technical development of TurtleStitch was led by Michael Aschauer, who built the system within, the Snap! visual programming language created by Jens Mönig and Brian Harvey at the University of California, Berkeley. Snap! itself continues the Logo tradition, carrying forward the same philosophy of learning through exploration and construction championed by Seymour Papert, Wally Feurzeig, and Cynthia Solomon.
In TurtleStitch, users don't write lines of code. Instead, they build programs by snapping together colorful blocks that guide the turtle's movement. The experience feels less like programming and more like constructing an idea. One block at a time, the turtle follows its instructions, and a design gradually takes shape.
For beginners, that makes all the difference. Within minutes, they can create an original embroidery design and watch their ideas transformed into movement, and then into stitches.
Once again, the turtle became a bridge between thought and creation.
It had simply found a new surface.
This time, it was fabric.
Now It's Your Turn to Explore
For more than fifty years, the turtle has helped learners explore mathematics, programming, and creative thinking. Now it's your turn.
Let's meet today's turtle.
Open your web browser and go to www.turtlestitch.org. You can begin coding immediately without creating an account. However, I highly recommend creating a free account so you can save your projects to the TurtleStitch cloud and return to them later.
When the home page appears, click Run to open the TurtleStitch editor.
In just a few minutes, you'll be guiding the turtle across the screen, just as generations of learners have done before you. Only this time, the trail it leaves behind won't end on paper or a computer screen. It will become something you can stitch with thread and hold in your hands.
To help you get started, I've also created a set of TurtleStitch Help Cards that explain the most commonly used blocks and commands. Keep them nearby as you work through the projects - they're designed to be a quick reference whenever you need a reminder.
You can download the Help Cards here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Wp4Ac_lEOlm-4WHbgMivUSDhjZSeWm25/view?usp=sharing
The Three Main Parts of the TurtleStitch Workspace
The TurtleStitch editor is organized into three sections that work together. Understanding what each one does will help you feel at home right away.
1. The Palette The palette is located on the left side of the screen. It contains nine color coded groups of blocks, each organized by function. You will find groups for Motion, Control, Embroidery, and more. This is where all of your building blocks live. To use a block, simply click and drag it from the palette into the scripting area.
2. The Scripting Area The scripting area is the wide open space in the middle of the screen. This is where you build your program. Drag blocks from the palette into the scripting area and connect them together, one on top of another, to create a stack of instructions. That stack is your script, and it tells the turtle exactly what to do and in what order.
3. The Stage The stage is on the right side of the screen. This is where the turtle lives and where your design takes shape. As your script runs, you can watch the turtle move across the stage in real time, leaving a trail behind it with every step.
Getting to Know the Palette The palette is your toolbox. Everything the turtle can do lives here, organized into nine color coded groups. Each color represents a different category of blocks, making it easy to find what you need at a glance.
Here is an overview of all nine categories:
Motion — These blocks control how the turtle moves. Forward, backward, turning, and positioning all live here. If you want the turtle to go somewhere or face a different direction, you will find the right block in this group.
Control — These blocks manage the flow of your program. Repeat blocks, wait blocks, and other tools that control timing and sequencing are found here. This is where your designs gain rhythm and structure.
Embroidery — This is what sets TurtleStitch apart from other turtle graphics tools. These blocks control the stitching behavior of the turtle, including stitch length, jump stitches, and other settings specific to embroidery output.
Pen — These blocks control the turtle's pen, including putting it down, lifting it up, and setting its color and size. When the pen is down, the turtle draws. When it is up, the turtle moves without leaving a trace. The pen up block creates a jumpstitch between sections of embroidery.
Operators — These blocks handle math and logic. They allow you to perform calculations, compare values, and combine conditions to create more complex and responsive designs.
Variables — These blocks allow you to store and reuse values in your program. Instead of typing the same number repeatedly, you can save it as a variable and refer to it by name throughout your script.
Sensing — These blocks allow the turtle to detect and respond to its environment, such as its current position, the color beneath it, or input from the keyboard and mouse.
Color — These blocks give you control over color in your designs, allowing you to set and change the colors the turtle uses as it moves across the stage. When this block is used, it makes the embroidery machine stop so that the thread can be changed to a different color.
Other — This category contains additional utility blocks that do not fit neatly into the other groups. It includes the zoom block, which allows you to adjust the scale of the stage view.
Each group has its own color, so over time you will find yourself reaching for the right color automatically, without even needing to read the labels.
To use any block, simply click on it and drag it into the scripting area. You can also click on a block directly in the palette to run it immediately, which is a handy way to test what a block does before adding it to your script.
Getting to Know the Scripting Area
The scripting area is where your ideas take shape as a program.
Think of it as a blank canvas where you assemble your instructions. Blocks dragged from the palette can be placed anywhere in the scripting area. When you bring two blocks close together, you will notice they snap into place, connecting like puzzle pieces. This is how you build a script, one block at a time, each one telling the turtle what to do next.
The order of the blocks matters. The turtle reads your script from top to bottom, executing each instruction in sequence. Moving a block up or down in the stack changes the order in which it runs, and that can completely change the shape the turtle draws.
You can have more than one stack of blocks in the scripting area at the same time. This is useful when you are experimenting with different ideas or testing individual blocks before combining them into a larger design.
To remove a block from the scripting area, simply drag it back to the palette or right click on it for more options. Nothing is permanent. Everything can be adjusted, rearranged, or removed. The scripting area is a place for exploration, and there is no wrong way to use it.
You can run just part of your program by clicking on an individual block or a connected stack of blocks. This is a great way to experiment and test ideas as you build your design. The output of your code will be displayed on the stage area.
Getting to Know the StageThe stage is a grid of points described by two coordinates: x, which runs horizontally, and y, which runs vertically. The turtle always starts at the very center of the stage, at the point (0, 0) and points to the right. From there, moving right increases the x value, moving left decreases it, moving up increases the y value, and moving down decreases it.
This coordinate system gives you precise control over where the turtle goes and what it draws. When the turtle moves, it moves in steps. 127 steps = 1 inch = 2.54 cm
How the Turtle TurnsOne of the most important things to understand about turtle geometry is how turning works. In TurtleStitch, the turtle turns based on external angles, not internal ones.
This is different from the geometry most of us learned in school. In traditional Euclidean geometry, the internal angles of a triangle each measure 60 degrees, adding up to 180 degrees total. But the turtle does not think about the inside of a shape. It thinks about how much it needs to turn at each corner to keep moving forward.
To draw a triangle, the turtle turns 120 degrees at each corner. That is the external angle, the amount the turtle's direction changes with each turn. Three turns of 120 degrees add up to 360 degrees, one full rotation, which is exactly what the turtle needs to return to its starting point and close the shape.
The shift from internal to external angles can feel counterintuitive at first, for children and adults alike. It helps to think of it from the turtle's point of view. The turtle is not measuring the corner of a shape. It is deciding how much to rotate its own body before taking the next step. Imagine walking the outline of a triangle yourself. At each corner, you do not think about the angle inside the shape. You think about how much you need to turn your body to keep going. That is exactly what the turtle is doing. This small shift in perspective, from the shape to the mover, is at the heart of what makes turtle geometry such a powerful and intuitive way to experience mathematics.
Embroidery MetricsAt the bottom of the stage area, an information bar displays three key metrics about your design:
Stitches – The total number of stitches in your design
Jumps – The number of jump stitches, which occur when the needle moves from one point to another without stitching
Size – The overall dimensions of your design, shown as width (left to right) and height (top to bottom)
Now that you are familiar with the TurtleStitch environment, it is time to put it to work.
Creating Your First Embroidered Design - A Square Imagine you are a turtle standing on one side of a square. Walk forward until you reach a corner (called a vertex). At the corner, turn so that you can continue walking along the next side of the square.
How much should you turn? A square has four corners, and after making one turn at each corner, you will have turned a full circle, or 360 degrees. To find the amount of each turn, divide the total turn by the four corners: 360 ÷ 4 = 90
So, each time you reach a corner of the square, you turn 90 degrees before walking along the next side. By repeating this four times, you will trace the entire square.
Yikes, there are two red error messages! The clamping message means an embroidery stitch needs to be added. Without it, the stitches that are embroidered will be too long. The density warning means too many stitches are packed into the red-highlighted area, which can cause the needle to break or the stitches to bunch up. To fix this, move the turtle a couple of steps away from the center with each rotation.
It now works for squares by moving the turtle away from the center and adding an embroidery stitch!
Can you make it work for a pentagon? 360/5 is 72, so the turn is 72 degrees for each side of the pentagon. The repeat 24 and turn 15 degrees stay the same.
Can you generalize it for any polygon?
Let's try a polygon with any number of sides. To find the turn angle, divide 360 by the number of sides. For example, a decagon has 10 sides, so 360 divided by 10 gives a turn angle of 36 degrees. Repeat the forward-and-turn steps once for each side to complete the shape.
To generalize this, make a variable to hold the number of sides, call it something like Sides. Then the turn angle becomes 360 divided by Sides, and you repeat the forward-and-turn steps Sides times to complete the shape.
Let’s Make a Mug RugUsing the rotated polygon code, add a jump stitch and a go to block to the code.
A jump stitch block was used to move the turtle without leaving a trail of stitches. The toggle switch turns the jump stitch on and off.
The go to block places the turtle in the correct location. The point in direction 90 degrees block ensures the turtle is pointing the correct way for the square border.
The set color block is used to stop the embroidery machine so that a piece of felt can be added as a backing to the mug rug.
The square border code was added with a tie stitch and trim. The tie and trim stitch ensures that the last stitch will not unravel.
The result is a beautiful mug rug to be embroidered.
Preparing Your Design for the Embroidery Machine Once your design is complete (make sure the size of your design can be embroidered on your machine), you're ready to export it for your embroidery machine. From the File drop-down menu, select the format that matches your machine. For example, if you're using a Brother SE700, choose "Export as Tajima/DST." The file will automatically save to your computer's downloads folder. With the file in your downloads folder, transfer it to a USB stick and then insert the USB stick into your embroidery machine for use. Some newer machines use Bluetooth to transfer the design. Follow your embroidery machine's instructions to do this.
Embroidering the Design on Felt Start with a 9 x 12 inch sheet of felt. Hoop the felt on one side, leaving the other half free (this will later become the backing). Load your design and begin embroidering. This program includes a Set Color command that will automatically pause the machine mid-project. When the machine stops, remove the hoop from the machine, being careful not to remove the felt from the hoop.Cut the unhooped half of the felt free, then tape it to the back of the hoop using two pieces of tape (one on each side), making sure neither piece of tape overlaps the border area that still needs to be embroidered.Return the hoop to the machine and run the remainder of the design.
Finishing
Once embroidery is complete, trim the piece down to a 4 x 4 inch square. Your mug rug is finished and ready to use!
The Future of the Turtle
More than fifty years ago, children gathered around a small floor turtle as it drew lines across sheets of paper. They weren't simply learning to program. They were learning to think.
Today, the turtle still invites us to explore. The pen has become thread, paper has become fabric, and the classroom has expanded to include makerspaces, embroidery machines, and creative communities around the world.
Continuing the Exploration of TurtleStitch
Here are some mug rug programs that I wrote that are annotated to continue your trail of coding in TurtleStitch.
Making a Snowflake Mug Rug
Making a Sun with Rays Mug Rug
Making an Etch a Stitch Mug Rug - a fun way to make a design - no coding is necessary - just move the arrow keys - left, right, up, down
Making a Turtle Mug Rug - a turtle design ready to be embroidered! Just change the look of the border with different embroidery stitches and types of border
Where We Go From Here
Along the way, remarkable visionaries have guided its journey. Seymour Papert imagined a new way for children to learn. Cynthia Solomon showed how that vision could flourish in the classroom. Andrea Mayr Stalder carried the same philosophy into the world of digital fabrication. Each generation has preserved the spirit of the turtle while finding new ways for it to inspire learners.
More than sixty years after Seymour Papert and his colleagues began imagining new ways for children to learn at MIT, the turtle is still making new trails. It continues to invite learners to explore mathematics, programming, art, engineering, and design through the simple act of creating something meaningful. Its journey is far from over. Every new learner, every new project, and every new idea adds another chapter to its story.
A special thank you to Beth Lloyd, whose generosity and enthusiasm helped make the workshop such a success. Thank you for bringing your embroidery machine and for helping participants transform their digital designs into so many beautiful finished pieces.
And to Cynthia Solomon: thank you for your encouragement, your support, and your lifelong commitment to helping children learn through exploration. Without your inspiration, I never would have discovered the depth and wonder of TurtleStitch. It was an extraordinary privilege to teach this workshop alongside you at MIT, where the turtle's journey first began.The turtle has come full circle.
And from here, it will continue making new trails. 🐢
