PIQ - The start of a new project

 Recently reading either facebook or someone's blog, I saw a reference to a PIQ quilt and became enthusiastic about making one.  That is the problem with checking out facebook and other blogs, I find so many ideas and quilts I want to try.

This PIQ stands for Pi Quilt. Having a  BA in math, the Pi immediately got my attention.  Not that I even remember what I did with the Pi function, but I do remember it goes to infinity.  This clever quilter had made a quilt by assigning fabrics to the digits 0 - 9, and then using the Pi number to determine the order to use the fabrics in her quilt.  I believe her pieces were squares.

Well I added this interesting method to my desire to make a thousand pyramids quilt someday, and presto I had a new project.   Using EQ, I drew a quilt with 1,000 "pyramids" or equilateral triangles. I liked this and determined to get the 1,000 pyramids I would need 513 digit pyramids and 487 background ones. I did not want to count the half triangles and the beginning and end of each row.

The next step was to determine what the first 512 digits were in Pi.  I googled this and found a function where I could enter the number of digits I wanted and it not only gave me the list of digits, but also told me how many of each digit was listed.  Amazing what you can find on the internet.  It did not include the 3 but that was easy enough - just add one more 3 to the list of digits.

The first 512 decimal places of Pi contains 45 0s, 59 1s, 55 2s, 54 3s, 55 4s, 50 5s, 50 6s, 37 7s, 54 8s, and 53 9s. Below is "3 dot" followed by the first 512 decimals of Pi.

3 . 1 4 1 5 9 2 6 5 3 5 8 9 7 9 3 2 3 8 4 6 2 6 4 3 3 8 3 2 7 9 5 0 2 8 8 4 1 9 7 1 6 9 3 9 9 3 7 5 1 0 5 8 2 0 9 7 4 9 4 4 5 9 2 3 0 7 8 1 6 4 0 6 2 8 6 2 0 8 9 9 8 6 2 8 0 3 4 8 2 5 3 4 2 1 1 7 0 6 7 9 8 2 1 4 8 0 8 6 5 1 3 2 8 2 3 0 6 6 4 7 0 9 3 8 4 4 6 0 9 5 5 0 5 8 2 2 3 1 7 2 5 3 5 9 4 0 8 1 2 8 4 8 1 1 1 7 4 5 0 2 8 4 1 0 2 7 0 1 9 3 8 5 2 1 1 0 5 5 5 9 6 4 4 6 2 2 9 4 8 9 5 4 9 3 0 3 8 1 9 6 4 4 2 8 8 1 0 9 7 5 6 6 5 9 3 3 4 4 6 1 2 8 4 7 5 6 4 8 2 3 3 7 8 6 7 8 3 1 6 5 2 7 1 2 0 1 9 0 9 1 4 5 6 4 8 5 6 6 9 2 3 4 6 0 3 4 8 6 1 0 4 5 4 3 2 6 6 4 8 2 1 3 3 9 3 6 0 7 2 6 0 2 4 9 1 4 1 2 7 3 7 2 4 5 8 7 0 0 6 6 0 6 3 1 5 5 8 8 1 7 4 8 8 1 5 2 0 9 2 0 9 6 2 8 2 9 2 5 4 0 9 1 7 1 5 3 6 4 3 6 7 8 9 2 5 9 0 3 6 0 0 1 1 3 3 0 5 3 0 5 4 8 8 2 0 4 6 6 5 2 1 3 8 4 1 4 6 9 5 1 9 4 1 5 1 1 6 0 9 4 3 3 0 5 7 2 7 0 3 6 5 7 5 9 5 9 1 9 5 3 0 9 2 1 8 6 1 1 7 3 8 1 9 3 2 6 1 1 7 9 3 1 0 5 1 1 8 5 4 8 0 7 4 4 6 2 3 7 9 9 6 2 7 4 9 5 6 7 3 5 1 8 8 5 7 5 2 7 2 4 8 9 1 2 2 7 9 3 8 1 8 3 0 1 1 9 4 9 1 2 9 8 3 3 6 7 3 3 6 2 4 4

So now I have my design and the numbers.  I know from my EQ drawing that my quilt will have 39 pyramids per row and 26 rows.  Each row is 20 digit pyramids and 19 background pyramids. Now what fabrics to use????  I really wanted to use only fabric in my stash, but using only one fabric for each digit is only 10 fabrics and to me that is not very scrappy.  So I decided to go with one color per digit and then use 7 or 8 fabrics in that color for each digit.  Now that is scrappy in my book.

Now to my fellow quilters, I am known as someone who obsesses over organizing my projects.  As I began to think through this process, I knew I needed a way to keep up with the pyramids so I kept them in the right order when making the quilt.  As I usually do, I started with an Excel spreadsheet  with 20 columns and 26 rows.  I then wrote in each cell the Pi digits, with row 1 being the first 20 digits in Pi, Row 2 being number 21 through 40, and so forth.  On the 26th row, I only needed 12 pyramids, so the remainder of that row will just be a place for my signature block and story of the quilt.

Now the  fun began of cutting out my fabrics for English Paper Piecing.  I used illustrator to draw 2" equilateral triangles for the paper foundations, and used 60" triangle ruler to cut out 2 1/2" triangles from the fabrics. Fortunately I have my fabric stash of pieces less than one yard (most much smaller than that) sorted by color, so it was just a matter of pulling the buckets by color, selecting 7 or 8 different fabric of similar color value and cutting out the triangle.

I am storing the triangles in photo cases, two colors in each case:

I needed 5 cases for the 10 colors, and I labeled each case.  

I needed two cases for the white/off white background triangles.  I believe I have over 30 different fabrics there. The circle dot is just there to separate the different stacks of white.  Eventually I think I will just stack them randomly and now worry about keeping them separated.

So now I am all neatly organized and ready to go :)  I had to try out my method to make sure it would work, so here is the start of row 1.   I love English Paper Piecing, so this was a joy to do.

I am excited about my new project.  I like the organization I chose and I am sure it will be with me for several years.  I am in no hurry to finish this project.  Some may think me obsessive about how I approach a project, but that is half the fun for me.