domesticat's blog

New pentagon in town!

Unsurprisingly, several people reached out to me to say HEY NEW PENTAGON AMY, DID YOU SEE? I love you. You know me well. 

There are two kinds of people fascinated with the idea of finding shapes that can fill a two-dimensional plane: geometry professors, and quilters. What's weird, and sad, is that they aren't really talking to each other. I've corresponded with a few of them, and as far as I can tell, there are quite a few mathematicians who are working on these problems, but the number of quilters playing with the end results likely can be numbered on my fingers and toes.

angles of light

My time in Portland marks the first time in my life living anywhere other than a humid subtropical climate. Relocating into a temperate zone has forced me to rethink my relationship with the sun, in ways both expected and not.

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An intro to Octopus's Garden

FINALLY! After four months, this beastie is finally done. 

Details on the construction of this quilt are available at domesticat.net/quilts/octopus-garden

Pattern: Swirl.
Hand-pieced (NOT appliquéd!)
Machine assembled
Machine quilted

Time estimates on hand-sewing:

32 interior 4-swirl pieces: about 48 hours
28 exterior 3-swirl pieces: about 28 hoursOctopus' Garden: complete!

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Sevens and fourteens

It's been a long time since I've talked on this site about Seven Brides For Seven Brothers, but if you follow me on social media (twitter, facebook, pinterest) it's become clear in the past couple of weeks that I've gotten to work.

Pick-up time

In filmmaking terms, "pick-up" means fixing minor shots after the majority of a film has been shot. We're to that point on Pentatonic, my long-belated Penrose tiling quilt:

The year books came back to me

With just a couple of days left to go in the year, Alison Bechdel's Fun Home brought me to my unspoken goal of reading 50 books this year. My ability to focus on books has been virtually nil since 2010, and I remember, earlier this year, how keenly I felt the loss. I was once a person who defined herself by her bookshelf, both of books read and books yet to consume, and that part of my life had stopped cold. 

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