The Solution

To solve the puzzle we started out by replacing the cloth with numbers.  Originally, we did that because it was easier than trying to draw up another pattern and I didn't want to cut apart my original one.  Jamie and I figured out a layout pretty quickly that would require us to throw away three or four squares.  I was fine with that, I didn't want to spend a ton of time trying to find a solution.

I knew that a computer could solve the problem, but I don't know how to do that.  Jamie, being a mathematician and wanting the most elegant answer, took the problem to work and got a solution from a co-worker.

The numbers that we assigned to each cloth type now became critical in figuring out the solution.  Putting the tiles into a computer and telling the computer to match them up I'm sure is a pretty simple thing to do, something I wish I knew how to do, but don't.  I ended up with a list of numbers.  From that point I was able to reconstruct what the nine patches should look like:

From the solution, I was also able to figure out what the most probable identity of the thrown away square was.

 The key was the every cloth type had nine squares, except the blue dot and line piece.

So, when your kids ask you why they have to learn math, you can tell them that some day they might want to make a quilt and that they might have to figure out the easiest way to do that, and that a little bit of math might save them a whole lot of time and frustration.

Quilting and Math

I'm just sewing the squares together and marking for the next few days, so the posts are going to be a little more varied than just where I am on the quilts.

Sewing involves quite a bit of math.  You have your standard measurement problems that help you to decide how big to make something or how much fabric you need to by.  There's also way that you cut a piece of flat fabric to fit it together with another piece of flat fabric to make something that fits over a three dimensional object (usually a person) is an interesting mathematical puzzle.  Take sleeves for instance.  Look at your shirt, hold your arm out to your side.  Pretty much it looks like a rectangle was cut and sewn to the other rectangles that make up the body of your shirt.  But, the basic sleeve shape is really this:

I remember being pretty surprised by that shape when I made my first garment with a sleeve.  Of course I was only 12 or 13 and hadn't really though about it, but even as an adult I don't think it is obvious that in order to get sleeves you should cut something out that looks like that.  Of course the apparent rectangles that make up your shirt, aren't really rectangles, which I'm sure you've guessed by now.

Quilts are pretty straight forward in their layout, doesn't really seem like much math is going on with my quilt, just the basic, what size how much fabric to purchase sorts of things, but in the planning stages we had an interesting puzzle to solve.  I laid out my plan based on the original photograph I found.

I simply replaced the fabric in this quilt with the ones that I had picked for my quilt.  For instance the blue with stars on it replaced the black squares, the stripes replaced the blue with thatch marks, etc.

That was before I found out about the trick to make the squares.  Once I realized that making the nine patches and then cutting them, was so going to be much easier that piecing all the squares and rectangles together individually, I needed to figure out how to construct the nine patches so that I could get the resulting squares with a minimum of waste.

I figured that who ever made the green quilt had made 9 nine-patches and cut them into 36 squares and then had one that was wasted.  So we went to work trying to figure out the patches.

To be continued...

The Plan

My biggest concern about attempting quilts for my boys was that they are seven years apart.  I didn't want to have something that was too cute for Bailey, or something that was too grown up for Seth.  I also wanted to have something that the boys could use until they wear out.  I was inspired by Pottery Barn's patchwork quilts that they are currently selling, so I began looking for patchwork quilts.  The nine patch pattern seemed perfect, so I drew up a plan:

I like my drawing so much that I've been a little scared to see it all put together, but I think it looks awesome! 

 It's not sewn together, but I had to organize the squares and I wanted to see what the quilt would look like, so I laid it out.  The picture really doesn't do it justice.  I'll get a better one after I get them pieced together and can take it outside and get some better lighting. The yellow things are papers that help me to know where to put the square.

I'll probably stay up for a little tonight working on sewing the squares together.

Disappering Nine Patches

When I was first looking for ideas for these quilts I knew that I wanted to do something a little more traditional than the quilts I was working on for the girls, but I still wanted it to have modern elements.

The traditional element that forms the basis of this quilt is the nine patch.  The name is pretty much self-explanatory.  You sew together nine squares of the same size, easy peasy and they look like this:

Quilts made using this easy nine patch date back to the beginning of the 19th century.  Nine Patch Quilt Patterns has a short history and a few examples of some early nine patch quilts.

The origins of the disappearing nine patch pattern are not certain, but it seems to have made it's first appearance in a book "Magic Pillows, Hidden Quilts" by Karin Hellaby.  In that book Hellaby refers to the quilt pattern as "Nine Patch Magic".  The book was published in 2002.

Now that I have the 19th century nine patch made, I get to bring it into the 21st century by cutting it into quarters, like so:

Today, I get to cut all 18 of the nine patches into quarters, and arrange them in order to sew them together.

I doubt I'll get to sewing them together today, but here's to hoping.

Nine Patches!

Here they are:

Still Behind, But Moving Along

Five more to go, then cutting to make the disappearing nine patch.  Pictures tomorrow.

A Day With the Family

The state we live in gets election day off of school, so we spent the day as a family.  My plan was to sew the nine patches together after we got back.  But first we had scouts and then getting the kids to bed.

I worked on the patches after the kids went to bed, and was making good progress, but then I noticed a problem.  I had stitched several of the patches so that they were reflections of what they should have been.  If I held the patch up in the mirror it looked right, but when I looked at it straight on, it was wrong.  I switched left and right.  I will spend tomorrow undoing that mistake and finishing as many of the patches as I can.  That puts me hopefully only one day behind.