So, I finally finished my nee favorite quilt. It started as a whim, but has turned into a beloved family quilt. It also serves as a fabulous example of the architecture of a quilt, the way a simple, unassuming sketch is transformed into something fabulous. In short, I love the way this:
Turns into this:
I’ve talked about this quilt a bit before, giving a sneak peek of Bee and Babbit on the top, but now that it is done I am especially happy with it. This was my first go at using the embroidery powers of my new Janome to quilt a quilt. It actually worked a dream.
After designing the quilting motif:
It was just a matter of marking out a grid on the quilt top for centering each area in the embroidery hoop and then letting rip with some mighty quilting action.
The motif was designed to overlap in every direction so it produced all-over quilting that feels kind of like a stipple, but is actually nine entwined digits of pi. Yep, that’s some geeky, quilty love…
So, there it is: the Pi Quilt. It has become our indispensable play mat, along with being one of my personal favorites. It still amazes me how that dull sketch became something so wonderful; thank goodness for color (especially awkward colors), pattern, texture, and contrast. I really do love building quilts up from the ground up, pushing them to their limits even though all I am working from is the roughest of schematics.
At first I thought of quilting as design, then sculpture, but now I have really settled in on architecture, though that may be heavily influenced by my experiences with architecture at Cranbrook; those cats were just about the only ones making sculpture back in those days…
Anyway, Bee is planning to teach Babbit his numbers, and I am looking forward to sharing the wonders of pi with Bee. Yay geeks!!!
-t
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