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# Queer needleworkers stitch Alan Turing banner using his own mathematics
- URL: https://www.scenemag.co.uk/queer-needleworkers-stitch-alan-turing-banner-using-his-own-mathematics/
- Published: 2026-10-22T12:14:28.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-22T12:14:28.000Z
- Description: Around 30 members and friends of the Queer Needlework Circle in Eindhoven spent two months creating the huge embroidered tribute, designed to give gay computing pioneer Alan Turing the honour traditionally afforded to saints, kings and generals.
- Author: Graham Robson
- Tags: News

A group of queer needleworkers have created a spectacular hand-embroidered banner honouring **Alan Turing**, using the gay computing pioneer's own mathematics to construct his portrait.

Around 30 members and friends of the **Queer Needlework Circle** in **Eindhoven**, the Netherlands, spent two months of Sunday afternoons stitching the colourful 150cm by 300cm work together at **FashionTechFarm**.

Entitled *So the Next One Will Live*, the banner is the work of designer **Ralf Jacobs** and the Queer Needlework Circle, and seeks to give Turing the kind of ceremonial honour historically reserved for saints, kings and generals.

The project argues that queer heroes deserve to be remembered for what they contributed to the world, rather than solely as victims of historic persecution.

Turing helped break the **German Enigma** **code** during the Second World War and laid important theoretical foundations for modern computing.

![](https://www.scenemag.co.uk/content/images/2026/10/IMG_0973.jpg)

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But in 1952 he was convicted of gross indecency after admitting to a sexual relationship with another man and was subjected to hormonal treatment. He died in 1954, aged 41.

Turing was posthumously pardoned in 2013, 59 years after his death.

The artwork's title, *So the Next One Will Live*, reflects the creators' belief that remembering figures such as Turing should be about more than showing pity for the injustices they suffered.

They write in an accompanying leaflet: “Queer heroes deserve to be remembered for what they gave the world, not only as martyrs for what was done to them.”

Even the portrait of Turing woven into the banner is rooted in his scientific legacy.

In his landmark 1952 paper *The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis*, Turing demonstrated how two diffusing substances could transform a uniform field into naturally occurring spots, stripes and other patterns.

Jacobs used those principles to run a reaction-diffusion simulation across a photographic portrait of Turing. The resulting pattern was printed onto cloth as a heat-map gradient before its contour lines were painstakingly traced by hand.

The needleworkers translated the computer-generated contours into sashiko, the Japanese tradition of running stitch, with different coloured threads following the patterns and translucent fish scales accentuating highlights in Turing's portrait.

![](https://www.scenemag.co.uk/content/images/2026/10/IMG_0971.jpg)

Submitted

“The computer proposes; every stitch is placed by hand,” the project's accompanying text explains.

The finished creation deliberately resembles a traditional processional banner, featuring elaborate gold trim and fringe.

It hangs from a yew stave, with an apple made from the same wood positioned at each end as a reference to the half-eaten apple found beside Turing when he died.

The banner was displayed at **Dutch Design Week** this month and subsequently attracted further attention online, with its creators saying a Reddit post received 34,000 views and 1,500 upvotes in its first day.

Jacobs and the Queer Needlework Circle describe the project with the phrase: “A canon is not only written. It can also be sewn.”

The artwork is also available to travel, with its creators saying it can be displayed in the UK.