Lazy Math

When I was a kid and into my teenage years I was good at math and I liked it. Until I hit Calculus. Ugh. Everything up to Algebra was cool, which is good, because quilting math is Geometry and then sometimes Algebra, which means I can do it.

When I started quilting at the age of 9, my mom and I would come up with designs on graph paper, do the math for them, and then create them. No patterns, just math. This is how I continued to design my quilts up until 2011 when I discovered quilting on the internet, blogs, tutorials, etc. I considered myself a purist, that I only made quilts from my original design, did the math myself, etc. The problem was that there were so many awesome projects that I wanted to try that already had the math done, which sounded nice, so I started working on projects that required no math on my end.

Now that it is 3 years later, when I think of a new design and want to sit down and do the math for it I get lazy, and then try to find a project that is similar so I can use the math provided and then customize it to my liking. I know that I am just getting lazy, so one of the things I want to work on this year is to get back to my math side of quilting. I want to be able to do my own designs and become confident in my design skills again.

I am so excited that Electric Quilt for Mac is coming out soon and I think that will help me be able to produce my designs on a large scale with a consistent methodology.

Until then, I will start working on my patterns manually and see what I can come up with.

While I am at it I will show you the bee blocks from Nov, Dec, and Jan!! I haven\’t posted them in awhile and that way you will also have some pictures. 🙂

BeeJeebers

November was my month, so here are most of the blocks together.

December Block

January was also my month and I continued what I chose for the Simply Solids Bee, here is a group of them together.

Harmony. do. good. stitches.

November

January

And Simply Solids was the solid rectangles above and then the same block for January because the next person in the group loved the idea so much she also decided to do bright rectangles.