Saturday, March 14, 2015

Pi Day 3.14.15 @ 9.26.53

It's Pi(e) Day. Another crazy reason to celebrate.

Pi is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. It's an irrational number (which just means it can't be written as a fraction because the digits don't end or repeat) whose first few digits are 3.141592653... March 14 is extra special this year because we can correlate those digits to a specific time down to seconds. Nerds are thrilled.

It seems like a good day to celebrate circles in quilting. My favorite circles are my quilt guilds: currently SCVQA and QGGH. I've joined a guild everywhere I lived. They are always a source of friendship, inspiration and education. I hope you have a group of friends as inclusive and supportive.

On to circular quilts.

Although New York Beauty isn't finished, there is some progress. Only sixteen more. Even though these blocks are a decade old, I still like the colors and the pattern. {Why, oh why, didn't I finish it with the millenium?}

Red, pink, green and blue quilt blocks with quarter circles and five teeth.
New York Beauty in progress

All my quilts in the show this weekend have circles or curves. There have been many photos, but here's a new one. I used this fabric (a decade ago) to applique on t-shirt quilts for my daughter and her friends who all had dogs. This is the last of it. Does that make Propellers and Planes a scrap quilt?

Four brown and cream dog faces form the blades of this propeller shape. The outer band is a green plaid.
Steam Punk quilt block
from Propellers and Planes
with dog face conversation prints

Windmills is my current project. The block has slight curves. I'm echo quilting a quarter circle over the top.

Multicolored fabrics are improvisationally cut to form windmill blocks.
Quarter circle curves echo quilted across Windmills

The quilting shows up better from the back.

Windmills back with leftover blocks. 

I drew one line on the quilt using my cutting ruler. I placed it in one corner, rotated the ruler and marked with chalk at intervals. Then I connected those dots. That was my first quilting line. Subsequent lines are a walking foot away. This seemed like a better idea than starting in the corner.

Mark the first arc 24" away from the corner. Use the walking foot to echo that curve.
Example of marking the first line of quilting on Windmills

And we're having lemon meringue pie for dinner. Yum.

Enjoy the (pi) day, Ann