Math Quilt

One of my assignments this week was to do an art project representing modular arithmetic and transformational geometry. I immediately jumped at the chance to do a quilt.

If you imagine a coordinate grid, the 4th quadrant contains the mod 6 multiplication table (mod math is like going around a clock- so if it is 11:00 and you add 3 hours, it is 2:00 now, not 14:00, unless you do 24 hour time, but that even wraps around after a bit.) So you can read the bottom corner by seeing that anything times 0 is 0 (all white rows), anything times 1 is itself (the first non-white row and column both go 1, 2, 3, 4, 5). So what's 5 x 5 (mod 6) check the bottom corner- it's 1 (mod 6).

Then, I rotated it about the axis 3 times to fill out the other quadrants.

I did this all on Friday night and Saturday- but it's not actually the final product, just the picture I turned in. I ripped out the two center seams and am going to quilt the four squares seperately, then piece them back together using quilt as you go. So there will be blue sashing down the middle to break up the white a bit. Then, i'll bind it in blue.

I need quilting ideas. Should I just use my walking foot and make a grid? Or should I try free motion and stipple all over? Or should I be even more brave and try to quilt each square? I seem to like filler designs more than just stippling- but that would be very time consuming. Not to mention I would DEFINETLY need Kevin to build me my sewing table (he's cutting a hole into an old desk and then building a support to hold the machine. Seems like a fine solution. Just don't tell my Dad! It's his childhood desk. But hey- new life! It was destined for the trash heap.)


Elsa says this quilt is for her!