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.

Wish You Well Complete!

 This is a 2020 Block of the Month designed by Gail Pan.  I had the top completed in January, but just recently completed the quilting by hand.  I am attaching closeups of the blocks to show the quilting as I did a lot of various quilting patterns through the quilt.

March and April

January and February

May & June

July & August

September & October

November & December

Blocks of the Month - July

Today I finished the two blocks for the Val Laird BOM, Gentle Gems, for July.  I don't think I showed the blocks for June, so showing all four now. 

And here are the July blocks for the Gail Pan, Bring Me Flowers BOM

I have also started a new quilt designed by Katrina Hadjimichael, called Spike and Specks.  This will be a quilt for my niece Cindy.  

All three of these designers are from Australia.  I do love the designs by many of the Australian quilters.

Coronaville Finished!

 Yes, I finished my Coronaville quilt, just wish the pandemic was also finished.  At least I do feel more protected now, but the Delta variant is bad news.  

This is the front of the quilt.  I call it a topsy-turvy layout and that is the way 2020 felt.  So much stress and turmoil is lots of areas of our lives.  I centered the block with an embroidered cross representing my faith that I relied on to get through the year and continue with all that continues even today.

 Here is one of the blocks just to show a close up of the quilting.  The little house in the right corner always gives me a smile, I call it the Nut House - Mr. Peanut lives there.

Here is the back of the quilt.  My first layout had all the house kind of going in a circle around the center block.  But that turned into a tragic mistake when I tried to get it to laydown flat for pin basting.  Intially I went ahead and pinned it, thinking I would just quilt the pleats flat.....but then after 3 hours of pinning and going to bed  exhausted at 11:00 I could not sleep just thinking about how awful it looked.  So I get up, unpin the quilt  and start ripping out the stitches...until 2:00am, and then I went to bed.

Got up at 5:30am and finished ripping the back apart, coming up with a new layout and three days later, I had the back completed.  Big sigh of relief, it laid perfectly flat and I liked how it looked. !

Excitedly I re-pinned the quilt and started machine quilting it along the sashing and wondered why in the world my pins were in upside down????  I machine two sides of two of the sashing strips that ran length wise before I realized my problem.  I was quilting on the back!!!!! Well that would be why the pin were upside down.   Sigh, had to rip all the quilting back out.  You see the blocks on the front are

 11 1/2" square and on the back the blocks are 9" square - thus the sashing on the back and front do not line up and I wanted the front sashing to be quilted.   Big laugh here - after all it is topsy-turvey. 

This is the label on the back of the quilt.  I completed making the backing on July 2, and the Covid statistics at that time were 183,526,684 cases worldwide with 3,913,586 deaths. In the United States it was 34,561,404 cases and 620,645 deaths.   Today as I write this post I checked the stats again (one week later).  Cases are now 187,501,030 cases and 4,046,629 deaths worldwide; that is an increase in 7 days of 3,974,346 cases and 73,043 deaths.   In the United States  the increase over the 7 day period was 164,855 new cases and 2,180 new deaths.  The numbers are just overwhelming, so hard to comprehend.

Here is the quilting as it shows up on one of the back blocks with no houses.  My original plan was to do this free motion quilting.  After three attempts I gave up on that method and went with my jumbo stitch handquilting using #5perle cotton and a size 20 chenille needle.  Hard on the fingers, but I please with how it turned out.  

I started this quilt on March 13, 2020; the day SC declared a stay-at-home lockdown and planned to make 1 house for each day of the lockdown.   I cutout pieces for 64 houses thinking that would be plenty, haha.  By the time I reached 120 houses, I decided to keep going and reduced the size of the house and kept on sewing.  I made the front of the house with the first 120 blocks and decided I would continue making until I received my second Pfizer shot - which turned out to be 218 days later on February 14, 2021.  And the pandemic continues, with rates starting to go up again as the Delta variant spreads around the world and people still refuse to be vaccinated.  God help us.

 

Staying Busy

 Seems like each day I stay busy either with grandkids or my quilting - but don't seem to be getting much done.

I did finish two baby quilts made with the cutest elephants.  One is yet to be hemmed, but I am taking it with me to the July guild meeting to hem there.  It will be donated to the guild outreach program. This is the pattern I used,  by Wendy Sheppard.  I did modify the design a little to make a baby size quilt and added eyes and tails to my elephants.  I also used EQ to draw the block and then created paper piecing patters, as I so have trouble when piecing to get my quarter inch seam just right.  This quilt was a lot of fun to make and I can see another full size quilt in my future.

I have also been working on my Coronaville quilt, trying to get it quilted.  This has been a very challenging process for me.  I think I have made the most mistakes on this quilt than I every made on all my quilts put together.  I will do a post on this one next...just need to finish the quilting process.  This is a peek on how I am quilting the blocks with what I call a jumbo big stitch.

Color Challenge

 Some of the ladies in my quilt club have difficulty in selecting colors, and thus fabrics, to use in a quilt.  So I challenged them to pull an ad out of a magazine that appealed to them - not the product - but the combination of colors used in the ad.  One of the members brought a stack of magazines for us to look through, and everyone enjoyed not only looking for their ad (as well as collecting recipes.)

Here is the picture I chose:   (Not sure if it was the colors that appealed to me, or that the little girl reminds me of my granddaughter Lorelai.)  I couldn't even tell you what the ad was advertising.

I went fabric shopping my stash and came up with what I thought was good.  I found a block I wanted to try out on someone's facebook and she told me it was an Atkinson's pattern called Happy Holidays.  Turns out the pattern was for a Christmas Tree Skirt, a good bit larger than I wanted to make.  I drafted a pattern using three inch 60 degree triangles to make mine.  Then I made the block with English Paper piecing.  I would be curious to know if there is a name for this block.  I did look in block base and could not find it there.  My block finished off at 10" x 12" hexagon block.  I used a facing finish rather than binding.

Gail Pan - Bring Me Flowers

 Its been a month since I last posted and I have managed to get a few things done - making progress, not finishing anything.

The block of the month, Bring Me Flowers, by Gail pan - I completed June blocks:

I have been quilting on the Gail Pan BOM for 2020 - Wish You Well.   Its taking me awhile to complete as I just work on it sporadically.  This is one of my favorite embroidery blocks - Follow Your Heart.  I am trying to use a variety of different quilting patterns throught the quilt.  I have finished 8 of the 12 blocks, and almost completed the 9th one.

I have started a pattern by Fons and Porter called Americana Sampler.  Each month I am teaching a different block to my quilt club.  So far have done the Celtic True Lover's Knot and the Road to Paradise.