Thursday, January 09, 2020

Sacred Geometry for Project Quilting at Free Motion Mavericks

It's that time of the year again - Project Quilting! Since it's the first Challenge of the 11th season (11.1), this week's challenge is Notably Numeric - celebrating all things numerical including geometry.

Project Quilting Challenge 11.1 - Notably Numbers

Flower of Life
Sacred Geometry
To be honest, my first reaction was oh... but then as I was reading, the word geometry leaped off the page. Not that I'm into geometry but I love hexagons (hexies) and recently learned about Shri Yantra, that intriguing pattern made of triangles. Like the proverbial rabbit hole that is the internet, that brought me to Sacred Geometry and finally the Flower of Life.

I think that I love the Orange Peel pattern almost as much as hexies. As you can see from my piece, if you're into quilting, the first thing that stands out are the lovely orange peel in this pattern. Well, after reading more about it, it turns out that the Flower of Life is made up of a series of circles! Yup. If you want to learn more about them, see Related links below.

After finding out that this was a series of circles,
I started drawing (see What I learned below)

How to draw a big circle around the
project? With a plastic lid of course!




















My project is not quite done. I worked on it all evening on Sunday and created this without the circle. I found the right plastic container lid and then I had two circles!

The next step is making biased binding. I did find more fabric, so it's just a matter of doing it!
A Flower of Life done in free motion quilting
The deadline is Sunday but I would love to have it done by Saturday at the latest. If all goes well, I'm tempted to add small beads where the circles intersect. It's not a traditional thing to do, but it might be fun and pretty. I'll have to think about it.

What I learned
  • After learning about the Shri Yantra, I've been wanting to quilt one since it's composed of tons of triangles. It didn't take me long to realise that this was way above my ability, especially within a week. I'm really glad that I found the Flower of Life, which is not quite as complex.
  • It turns out that I'm not as inept in math as I thought. Once I found out that these were a series of circles, I actually figured out that the orange peels were created when the circles intersected at 60 and 120 degree angles. (I may have said that badly but I did draw it out! I was very impressed with myself).😊
  • After being too impressed with myself, I drew the pattern on the fabric with Frixion pens - and it left a "shadow" on the fabric! What to do? After a few attempts at different solutions such as appliqué, I finally decided to quilt the Flower of Life from the back of the quilt, so that the bobbin thread showed up on pristine fabric! I successfully did this in a couple of "large print wholecloth quilts". It really is a great technique.
Related links
Linking parties
I will be linking this post to many fun linky parties. Join in the fun and see what others have made or been working on this week! Put your foot downNeedle & Thread Thursday, Off The Wall Friday, Finished or Not Finished Friday, Friday Foto Fun, Peacock Party, Midweek Makers, Colour and Inspiration TuesdayCan I Get A Whoop Whoop?,

Great News! My project was featured on Dione's Colour and Inspiration Tuesday. How cool is that? Thanks Dione.

Free Motion Mavericks linking party

In the last linking party hosted here, we had quite a few link ups with so much creativity. I really hope that within the bustle of the holidays that you had a little bit of quiet time for yourself to quilt and play 😊

This week's featured quilt is the Baby Blocks quilt that Vasudha of Storied Quilts made for the Island Batik 3D challenge. It's so interesting how a three dimensional effect can be achieved with the right angles and fabric. If you didn't see Baby Blocks, go visit the post now (well, after you link up of course :-) )
Baby Blocks quilt by Storied Quilts
You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!
Click here to enter

10 comments:

  1. what a challenging quilting pattern that is!

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    1. Hi Karen, yes it was challenging to draw, but once I figured out the angles, it turned out easy enough. The free motion quilting part went surprisingly well.

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  2. I hope you will revisit the Shri Yantra at some point, I would love to see you do that. But your Flower of Life is wonderful too. Love all the orange peels :)

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    1. Hi Dione, I got very nervous when I read that they had mathematicians do the drawings for an accurate Shri Yantra - but then I don't need it for meditation so it wouldn't have to be technically perfect. I do hope to do one some day but I get pretty nervous about half-square triangles. They are not my friends :-)

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  3. Lovely quilting! Can't wait to see the finished project.

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  4. That looks fantastic...love that design!

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    Replies
    1. Thank you very much Karin - and thanks for linking up!

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