Saturday, February 27, 2010

Ever have one of thos 'Aha' moments when you thank your geometry teacher...

Only in my head of course. But I needed to get a whole bunch of round vases. And they needed to be a certain size. And the one I needed to match had a beautiful arrangement in it and I was not going to disturb it. But I couldn't tell what size the vase was. (It was very round, called a bubble bowl or bubble vase.)

I tried holding a tape measure in front to see how wide. Not easy, couldn't really tell. Then I tried a ruler in front and again behind. Numbers changed depending on my angle, eeek. Then I thought well I will just worry about the height, but again, lots of flowers in there that I was not going to touch. Hmm. I actually struggled with this for probably a day and a half. And then I had an 'Aha' geometry moment. (I think it is geometry.)

I remembered that there is some formula that says if you know one or two things you can get the other things. Mind you I did not know the formula by heart, but Google did. So I refreshed my mathness and saw that the diameter (which I needed) is equal to the circumference divided by PI. And the cool thing is that the circumfrence was 31.4-something inches. So very convenient! a 10" bowl. Yeah.

So when your kids say to you (as I said to anyone who would listen at the time) "WHY do I have to learn this stuff? You never use it in real life!" You can promptly correct them and relay my compelling saga. (I am so happy to be of service.)

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Fatty, Fatty Two by Four


Seriously, that is the name of this pattern. Well, kind of. I modified it a little bit. I ended up making 2 lap quilts with only a few more large squares put in than the original pattern called for. They had an uneven number, and the placement was somewhat random - that kills me. I really need some structure, a pattern, a little reason in the design. Scrappy is very hard for me, so I overcompensate by overthinking the block placement. But hey, my overthinking on this one gave me two quilts I love.

I gave one to my best friend for Christmas and I kept one for me. Yeah! They were both quilted by Donna. This was another of the Friday Night Valet Sewing projects.

I need to find out what the project is for March. I need a fix!