Sixty Degrees of Separation. Or, How One Quilter is Saving the World from Arithmophobia (recipe included)

     As a certifiable math geek, it surprises me how the sight of numbers causes some people's eyes to glaze over. Take Sudoku, for instance. I have more fingers and toes than the number of times I've had someone watch me fill in the little squares and say "I'm not good with math." Um... replace the numerals 1 to 9 with nine colors, or nine vegetables, or nine Chippendale's dancers. You can do it.

    Somewhere early on in my quilting life I discovered the joys of working with sixty degree (equilateral) triangles and their little buddies-  diamonds, hexagons, and so on. I moved on, but they called me back. "It's your mission to save the world from math phobia," they said. "Show other quilters how to love us as much as you do."

    My new workshop, Sixty Degrees of Separation, is intended to do just that.  I only teach it on Friday the Thirteenth (just kidding).  And speaking of phobias- check out the fabrics I chose!

     And...as I promised an occasional recipe, here is my awesome fruit dip recipe, which is especially fantabulous with strawberries. And it only has one, yes one, ingredient. Are you ready? Got your pencils handy?


One container Chobani pineapple Greek yogurt.

Recipe may be doubled or tripled as needed.


     I'll leave you with a few words from Neil...

Stolen Moments

     Yes, I really did steal my students' scraps. I only pretended to brush them off the table and into the trash; in reality they wound up in my bag at the end of the evening. Student A (if you're reading this, you know who you are) saved all her cutaways except for tiny strips of selvages. Too bad, because I could have had lots of fun with her vibrant colors, but I admire her for so quickly becoming a scrap hoarder.

      I was able to glean slightly larger leftovers from Student B - not as bright and colorful, but as one never has enough neutrals, I'm not complaining.

     The little quilt pictured began as some unknown quilter's project. From what I can deduce from the scraps (taken from the trash the day after an open quilt day at a local shop), these were likely the leftovers at the end of each row- a variety of batiks sewn to a strip of black Kona cotton- as well as a longer strip of black that was probably extra binding. I trimmed all the chunks of fabric to an equal width, and used the binding strip for my outer border. It needed a little "oomph", so I hand appliquéd little circles and partial circles (from a bag of little batik scraps I won at a guild meeting) randomly across the quilt. I then sandwiched and stitched it using the envelope method, turned it right side out, and added some hand quilting with metallic copper embroidery floss. I named it "Found Objects", and it has been in a quilt show and an exhibition of art quilts.

Found Objects