Stories with
Jess charts software developer Margaret Hamilton, whose contribution to history is out of this world…
Stitch People
Hulloall! There are few people who can say they have literally been ‘over the moon’, butfor those who rode on the Apollo missions, they can thank this month’ s woman in history for the trip!
Margaret Hamilton was the lead software engineer for the team that developed the on-board flight software for the Apollo space program. A brilliant scientist and mathematician, her ultra-reliable software design included fault detection and recovery techniques. These recovery actions allowed the software to detect errors and over loads andre prioritise tasks to prevent system shut down sand mission aborts. She also coined the term‘ software engineer ’.
She is inspiration for what you can do if you grow your mad skills. At a time when women weren’ t really considered serious contenders in the world of STEM( Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths ), she and others like her paved away for the future of equality in science.
While many of us will never be asked to design a system to put people on the moon, there’s every chance we’ ll be asked to create or stitch something a little left of centre.
Since working with Stitch People, I’ ve been asked to design all sorts of things. I’ ve created many customised Stitch People portraits as well as clothing and background sets.
A lot of research goes into each pattern that I create. Most of the time, patterns can be familiar enough but, every now and then, I’m asked to design something that catches me off guard. Recently, some of the more bizarre things I’ ve been asked to design include an adult astronaut
costume for Stitch People portraits, disk golf( I love that this is a thing !), and llamas! I recently designed the llamas along with many other farm yard animals for our revised‘ farm animals’ book– I must say, turning a complex animal into a small and simplified pattern is a fantastic ally fun challenge!
I never thought I’ d find my passion and talent in designing cross stitch patterns, but I’ m glad I was able to find a place for my skills with Stitch People! Happy stitching! Jess