Friday, May 27, 2011

Mathematical quilting

My son is off to college in the fall and I want to make a quilt for his dorm room.  School colors are blue and grey.   The challenge was which blue would go best with which grey and how do you figure that out when internet shopping?


I decided to invest in fat quarters of the different shades that looked 'right' when viewed from my computer screen.  I ordered from two different shops to increase my chances of being able to match the fabric back to the real name.


This was way harder than I anticipated.  Once all the fabric arrived, I took a photo of the fabric side by side and then attempted to map the colors back to the computer screen.  Holding the fabric to the screen yielded no match.  But laying the fabrics side by side and viewing the screen image side by side allowed for some success.  I called my daughter in for a second opinion and here is how I would label them.  (no idea why blogger rotated one and not the other.  sigh.)




(Even now when I write this blog post I second guess myself on whether I labeled this correctly!)  I'll probably go with Royal Blue and Stone but will experiment this weekend and make a block before ordering the fabric.


The quilt itself will be a very, very different from anything I have made before.


My son is very interested in math and computer science so I wanted to make a mathematical quilt.  After spending much quality time with google and several false starts on trying to map out  ideas, I settled on a fractal quilt.  This one is called a Flowsnake by Rebecca Chaky and can be  found here.   This photo is copied from her site.
I've managed to transfer my interpretation to graph paper and my job this weekend is to calculate fabric requirements and make determine after making a small sample that I won't loose my sanity while putting this together.


Happy Stitching!

6 comments:

  1. Oh my goodness... Flowsnake looks like quite a challenge but what a stunning quilt it's going to be in the royal and stone colors!

    Looking forward to seeing its progress...

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  2. Can't wait to see this finish - it will be stunning. Judy C

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  3. holy cowpies batman - this seems to be a challenging undertaking!!! good luck to you :)
    I made my graduate a mariner's compass using his school colors from college, high school and middle school! It turned out to be my best work yet :) I told him he couldn't use it to lay on while changing the oil in his car etc. Hope he appreciates what he has :) have a grand (and successful!) weekend - laurie

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  4. I love that snowflake quilt and look forward to seeing your interpretation!

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  5. Awesome! I love it! I hand quilted mine, and found out that one line of uninterrupted quilting follows the entire flowsnake pattern.

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  6. Your blue and white Flowsnake is beautiful! I can see it in your header picture. When did you finish it? Congratulations!

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