Thursday, June 18, 2009

Quilt Project #2 - Hilbert Curve Pot Holder

The piecing stage of quilting naturally has a lot of possibilities for exploring some of the niftier properties of polygons and tessellation, but the quilting stage can have it's math appeal as well. For example, space-filling curves lend themselves quite well to quilting.


The SierpiƄski curve (above left) is ideal for quilting because it is a loop , and you can start it in the middle. This is important because as you sew, the layers of fabric tend to shift. Starting in the middle helps mitigate this effect. However, for my second quilt project, I decided to make another whole cloth pot holder using the Hilbert Curve (above right) because it only has right angles (way easier).



I'm still unhappy with the binding. I spent much more time fussing with it this time trying to make it work. It's better than last time, but still very sloppy looking.

It's hard to see the fancy stitching pattern from this picture. Here's a close up:

1 comment:

Eric said...

Very cool! I'll hold off on suggesting you do the boundary of the Mandelbrot set until you downsize to an infinitesimal sewing machine.