A smattering of fabrics

VeloCity by Jessica Hogarth has been on my wish list for a while. I popped on to Etsy to grab some of my favorite prints from the line. 

 I bought them from Jennifer at Tactile Fabrics and had a pleasant experience with her and her shop so I thought I would recommend her. NOTE: This is an unsolicited recommendation and I paid for my fabrics fair and square.

Tactile fabrics has a great selection of modern prints and is actually having a huge winter sale with over 100 prints 25% off (including VeloCity). Jennifer processed my order almost immediately after I submitted and it was on my doorstep a few days later.

But what really sold me is she threw in a good sized scrap of the chevron pattern (see pic above) which I did not order and she wrapped everything up so nice. It was like opening a present. I will definitely shop with her again.

I'll be making some bags with these lovelies in the near future. Have a good weekend everyone!

January in Review, Goals for February

January was a good month for quilts. I made three. A baby quilt, a lap quilt, and a monster twin. It's like the three bears of quilts here. Linking up with Lily's quilts fresh sewing days.

1. Eggplant and Mustard, 2. Pink-a-lime-a-tron, 3. Playtime Squared

For February, my goal is finish this stary baby quilt. I have one block down and am slowing chugging through the other nine assembly style.

 Check out everyone's February goals at Fiber of all Sorts and Sew BitterSweet Designs.

January LYoF - Eggplant and Mustard

January 

Goal was set to finish my mustard and eggplant lap quilt. 

Relevant progress links last three blocks and finished top and binding.

Mission accomplished!

Final size is 55 x 68"

blocks contributed by kim, 21bakerstreet, Lynnmariewood, Alison, sunshine_sally, seahorsequilts, runswithscissors, Anne, fresh raspberry quilts, stampqnjlr, pemiddleton, and shimmyblisster. Thanks ladies!

Not to single anyone out, but I have to give mad props to Donna (aka. seahorsequilts) for parting with some coveted mermaids in this perfectly pieced block. 

The back is mostly a large scale print from cocoon called Metamorphosis plus some of the leftover flannel from the pink-a-lime-a-tron quilt back. The binding is Kona celery, also leftover from the same project.

The woodgrain quilting shows up nicely on the back. I quilted this one with a neutral Aurifil thread and it only took a few hours. Much easier design than the last quilt!! And the texture is to DIE for. I am snuggled under it right now.

The quilt has found a new home on my couch. Giant laser-eyed dog for scale.

Linking up with LYoF, TGIFF, Crazy Mom Quilts and the rest of the world.

WIP Wednesday - brand new WIPs

Almost done with my January finish. Nothing like handstitching on a deadline.

First block for another baby quilt. I think this one may get named star gazing.

The rest of the fabric is cut and I will chain piece the blocks

 I am about to attempt some curves in making Elizabeth Hartman's Happy Hour quilt. I didn't want to buy template plastic because I am cheap environmentally friendly. Take a shirt box and make your own...

No shirts were harmed in the construction of these templates.

Linking up with the other WIPpers at Freshly Pieced. 

Cake day

Happy Birthday to Kim a la CrafternoonDelight. In honor of her birth and continued will to survive I made this giant cake...

Apparently on Instagram they use bananas for scale. I don't instagram but I'll play along. Ideally you should use an item with constant size for scale, like a quarter. Or at least use something vulgar like this:

Do you want to see what is inside this monster?

4 layers of deliciocity. I used the black-and-white mocha cake recipe from the January issue of Food Network Magazine. Then I doubled the recipe for the chocolate buttercream filling and used it to fill and ice the cake. There was an additional chocolate ganache to be drizzled on top but I think that would be excessive at this point.

The yellow cake recipe is amazing. Maybe the best I have made. It is dense and flavorful. The chocolate cake is a good chocolate cake but nothing special. 

This is how I felt after eating my "small" piece. It was worth it.

Inspiring Molecular Biology - Merging Science with Art

I am a molecular biologist. I study very tiny things to learn more about diseases like cancer so we can be closer to a cure. In reality, my day to day duties consist mainly of moving small amounts of liquid from one tube to another. I met a lot of other quilters out there who also stemmed from the sciences. I suppose the joy in doing repetitive tasks in research draw the same types of people to quilting.

But this is a post for everyone, not just the ones who get giddy over DNA sequence and electromicroscopy. I think there is a real art and beauty to the science we perform. Many of the patterns in the natural world could lend themselves to some striking and modern quilt designs. I've chose a few common scientific images from molecular biology to illustrate my point.

DNA sequences

This is a group of related DNA sequences. As you may remember from biology class our DNA is an alphabet with only four letters, A, T, C, G. The number and order of these letters is the basis of what makes us who we are. When you line up related sequence the result is an interesting pattern - not quite random - not completely ordered. Wouldn't this make a striking quilt design?

In fact, Beverly St. Clair makes these gorgeous genome quilts. Each letter of the DNA code corresponds to an HST in a different orientation. You can literally read her quilt and decipher the DNA code. I made a genome quilt last year as a graduation gift for my PhD thesis mentor. I even used a DNA print from spoonflower as one of the letters. 

The CrPV IGR IRES RNA sequence.

DNA gel

This is an image of the DNA separated by size on a gel. You have probably seen images like this on some of the forensic science shows. Because each person has a unique DNA sequence, the pattern of the DNA when separated on a gel will be unique. This is one way we can determine paternity. 

https://www.dna-art.co.uk/

These image have false coloring - sadly our DNA is not actually a rainbow of colors in our bodies, but, it creates a beautiful image.  There are companies that will turn your DNA into artwork. I can easily see the quilt possibilities here.

Did you know that viruses love hexis too? A virus is composed of DNA surrounded by a protein shell, or capsid. The capsid is made of of lots of small proteins that interlock to form a hollow shell. 

Viral capsid (Jäälinoja HT et al. PNAS, 2008)

The capsids are a real testament to the process of assembly. Imagine if you collected a bunch of hexagons and pentagons and put them on the ground and they assembled themselves into this...

That is what viruses do. They make hexagons and pentagons and turn them into 3D shells. Luckily we quilters only have to work in two dimensions. 

I haven't seen anyone use a virus structure as the inspiration for a quilt yet but I would love to see it happen.

Congrats for making it to the end of the post. I hope you enjoyed this foray into where science and art merge. Maybe you even have a few ideas stewing. Or maybe you are bored to tears. So feedback anyone? Do you want to see more posts like this?

Either way, Happy Friday!

Giveaway winner

The gods have spoken and the winner is...

Ms. Sarah from stitchingandbacon. Shes relatively new to the blog scene so check out her blog if you haven't. Good stuff going on there. I know my fabrics will find a good home with her.

Thanks to everyone for participating! I had a lot of laughs over the bus stories. I bet some of you were thinking I had a particularly crazy bus story. Sorry to dissapoint you but I just thought of the question at random. My bus adventures usually revolve around me missing the bus as a kid and my dad making me write 500 or 1000 times "I will not miss the bus." It never seemed to sink in.