Pairing the mid-century work of Ada Dietz (1882-ca. 1970) with two compelling contemporary projects from Sonya Clark (1967- ), this article considers the ways in which normative mathematical ideas are remade through their engagement with weaving practice. Highlighting recent efforts to further ethnomathematics’ original decolonial intentions, I argue that Dietz and Clark’s inventive use of ‘outsider algorithms’ enacts a creative disobedience toward conventional mathematical forms, asking us to re-examine the possibilities for learning mathematics in informal settings.