From: boylan@sltg04.ljo.dec.com (Steve Boylan)
Subject: Re: Quilts (was: Re: sowing bags)
Reply-To: boylan@ljohub.enet.dec.com (Steve Boylan)
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 1992 20:47:35 GMT


In article <lk3h76INNr32@news.bbn.com>, dhardin@bbn.com (Dawn Hardin) writes:

> I was thinking of the different star patterns that can be made with patchwork.
> Eight and six pointed stars are easy to do (well, you have to sew fairly 
> well to make an eight pointed star match up in the center, but the basic
> techniques are easy to do and the patterns are easy to find.)  I still
> haven't found a five pointed star pattern, and haven't figured out how to
> draft one.  I once saw something called a Moore-Penrose (?) tiling in a
> math journal that can make five pointed stars, but they didn't look like
> pentacles at all.
> 
> (For the math nerds reading this, a quilt is nothing more or less than
> a tesselation of the plane.  I've always wanted to check out the math
> journals for cool tilings to make quilts from, but the way my life 
> is going post-baby, I probably won't do it.)

If I may continue the high-falutin' talk, the problem with the five-
pointed star is that it yields a pentagon as your basic building block,
and the pentagon won't tesselate the plane.  (For those of you who
AREN'T math dweebs and don't have a dictionary handy, pentagons won't
fit together neatly to cover a plane.)

Eight-pointed stars are usually embedded in a square, and six-pointed
stars in a hexagon.  Both tesselate.

To use five-pointed stars, you'll have to make them part of a design
that isn't based on the pentagram.  For example, you can put a 
pentacle inside a square or hexagon.

Or just sew a few pentacles here and there in random locations!

If the "Moore-Penrose" tiling you mentioned is the tiling I think it
is, what you get aren't pentacles.  The Penrose tiles I know are
aperiodic - there are two simple shapes that fit together to produce
a pattern that never repeats!  I think that would make a great
pattern for a quilt;  I've figured I could make ceramic floor tile
at some point!

> Something else that caught my eye a while back was an Amish applique 
> quilt to commemorate your dead.  One corner of it contained a graveyard
> with little coffins with the name of the person embroidered on it, and
> the rest of the quilt had little images from the persons life, like 
> symbols for their hobbies and interests, or scenes from their life.
> And they had a section with coffins of their living relatives that were
> just pinned to the quilt.  When the person died, then they moved the
> coffin into the graveyard and sewed it down.  Struck me as a little
> ghoulish.

I don't think I'd be able to rest comfortably under such a quilt!

> I guess another possibility is to have a white quilt and just draw 
> whatever you like with the thread in a quilting pattern.  My last
> quilt had eight pointed stars alternating with white squares, with
> pictures quilted into the white squares.  Actually, I only finished
> one of the white squares, and since it takes about five hours to do  
> one right, and there's about twenty left to do, it ain't gonna happen
> till the baby goes to college.  But the plans were for these intricate
> star-crosses on the corners and the centers, and pictures of the zodiac
> in the others.  Sigh.  At least it's still useful without the fancy
> quilting.

I've seen photos of some really beautiful quilts done this way.  My
mother had several good books on quilts.

Now, what should I make for the bed???

				- - Steve


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