I always wondered if any of my children would take up needlework when they became adults. They all learned basic sewing skills (as well as basic carpentry skills, cooking skills, etc.) as children but you never know which they will enjoy as adults. My oldest daughter, Carrie Merrell, has taken up quilting and her grandmother, Laura Nehring, would have been pleased. I think one of the things that appealed to both of them (and to me) in quilting is the math.
Carrie has just released her first ebook, the Quilty Math Workbook. It’s one of those books you look at and wonder Why Didn’t I Think of That? When I design a quilt, I spend hours figuring out how much of each fabric I need. And the next time I design a quilt, I start all over from scratch figuring out how much of each fabric I need. Carrie has organized the designing and math of a quilt into graphs and tables that you fill in as you go. The graphs help you visualize your developing quilt first as blocks and then as an entire quilt top. Then, as you work down each table, she has you apply simple math to the measurements of your quilt block to figure out how much fabric you need. And I use to figure out the math from scratch every time I designed a new quilt – Never Again! I’m using her workbook to keep my designs organized and the fabric calculations as simple and fast as possible.
