Happy Pi Day!

Wednesday, March 14, 2018

Shout it from the rooftops and get out your geeky math shirts - it's Pi Day!


Rainbow Circle Pi Quilt


Before being a stay-at-home mom, I was a middle school math teacher. Also, our last name is Piland. (Pronounced Pie-land.) So combine these, and the tradition of celebrating Pi Day was born! (In case you're lost, the mathematical term "pi" stands for the approximate number 3.14. So Pi Day - a made-up holiday celebrating all things related to pi - is March 14th.) Even my blog and business name reflects my love of pi!



Pi shirt and pi necklace
This year I added some pi necklaces from Stars and Sunshine on Etsy to my collection! (Shirt is from ThinkGeek.com.)


Now that we have two kiddos (ages 3 and almost 5), we like to celebrate in ways that involve them, too. We usually make cardboard box airplanes and "fly" around the room like pi-lots. Then we set sail as pi-rates and play in the tub for a bit. We eat lots of round foods and do circle art, too. And of course, no Pi Day celebration is complete without pie!

This year, I wanted to add a bit of quilty fun to the celebration too!


Rainbow Circle Pi Quilt

A friend gave me a fabulous 1 yard piece of pi fabric that I wanted to use as backing, so that was my starting point. I then gathered all the circle or dot fabrics I could find in my stash to create a rainbow of colors and printed out a *few* digits of pi.


Rainbow Circle Pi Quilt

Have you seen Cassandra Beaver's circle quilt? I love it! Inspired by her circles, I decided to use a similar idea for my Pi Day quilt.

Based on the size of my fabric scraps, the largest circle I could cut was 3" in diameter. The size of the scraps also limited how many circles I could cut from each fabric.

A small bit of math later, I decided to use the first 36 digits of pi to make the quilt.

I assigned each digit 0-9 to one of the colors - primarily in rainbow order.

I fused the fabric scraps to Lite Steam-A-Seam 2 and used my Olfa rotary circle cutter to cut all the circles.


Rainbow Circle Pi Quilt
Rainbow Circle Pi Quilt

Next I created the quilt sandwich on my dining room table. I used blue painter's tape to secure the backing fabric to the table, then put a piece of Warm & Natural batting, then a 40" square scrap piece of 108" wide backing called "Widescreen" by Carolyn Friendlander for Robert Kaufman Fabrics in Desert Green (which really is more of a light gray color) for the top.


Rainbow Circle Pi Quilt

Once the quilt sandwich was laid out, I used my Hera marker to mark six horizontal and vertical lines 5" apart.


Rainbow Circle Pi Quilt

Then I placed the circles at the intersection of the lines based on the digits of pi - an orange circle for 3, red for 1, yellow for 4, and so on. After pin basting, I pressed each circle in place.


Rainbow Circle Pi Quilt
Rainbow Circle Pi Quilt

I found matching (or close!) 50wt Aurifil thread for each of the colors in my thread stash. Medium Orchid #2479, Red #2250, Orange #2235, Yellow #2135, Green #2870, Light Jade #1148, Medium Blue #2735, and Dark Dusty Grape #2581.


Rainbow Circle Pi Quilt

I used my free motion quilting foot to quilt circles around the edge of each circle. I stitched on the fabric of each circle several times, and stitched about 1/2" outside of the circle too.


Rainbow Circle Pi Quilt

This created an unexpected result - the center of each circle puffed up! The texture is so cool!

After quilting, I trimmed the quilt and used the *extra* fabric from the backing to make the binding (I had to be a bit creative - and it was still really close!). I machine stitched it on using 50wt Aurifil thread #2024 White.


Rainbow Circle Pi Quilt

I love how the quilt turned out! It finished just about 34" square. The texture from the front and back are equally good. And I love how the quilt has it's own secret code!


Rainbow Circle Pi Quilt
Rainbow Circle Pi Quilt
Rainbow Circle Pi Quilt
Rainbow Circle Pi Quilt
Rainbow Circle Pi Quilt
Rainbow Circle Pi Quilt

Happy Pi Day!



Linking up with Scrap Quilt Challenge at Persimon Dreams, Let's Bee Social at Sew Fresh Quilts, Midweek Makers at Quilt Fabrication, Wednesday Wait Loss at The Inquiring Quilter, Needle and Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation, Finished or Not Friday at Busy Hands Quilts, Finish It Up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts, Can I Get a Whoop Whoop at Confessions of a Fabric Addict, Friday Foto Fun at Powered by Quilting, and TGIFF at MMM! Quilts.

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32 comments:

  1. I love how the circles "puffed" up!

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  2. I can't start a new project! I can't start a new project! I can't start a new project....look longingly at fabric stash....LOL
    I love it

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  3. Happy Pi Day to you too! Great puffy circle project!

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  4. Happy Pi Day, Laura, to you and your whole Piland family!!! Love your commemorative quilt!

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  5. What a fun quilt! Happy pi day, and now you should go get some pie and have a little pi/pie picnic on the quilt...

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  6. I love this, especially the puffy circles. x

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  7. My physicist twin sons would have loved this when they were young !

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  8. Happy Pi Day right back at you! What a great way to celebrate the day and your love of math. Thanks for linking up to Wednesday Wait Loss.

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  9. This is such a happy fun little quilt! I love it. Have you ever used the backing directly from the back to form the binding? Alison @ Cluck Cluck Sew has a great tutorial. Here is the link http://cluckclucksew.com/2014/01/binding-quilt-with-quilt-back.html I have done it once or twice and have a friend who does all her table runners this way.

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  10. This is darling! I just love those puffy pies!

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  11. Happy Pi Day, Laura! What a clever quilt! I love all the fun pi-related things you do with your kiddos. You're building great memories!

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  12. What a great Pi quilt!!! I thought you did trapunto on your circles...naw you just did great quilting to make them pop!!

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  13. The puffy circles are amazing, love the Pi quilt!

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  14. Such a cool quilt. Love both sides equally.

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  15. Happy Pi Day! Fun quilt! -Jean💟

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  16. I love how the circles puffed up! We had cookie dough pie yesterday :)

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  17. So glad to see this little quilt...and, of course, the puzzle. Great fun!

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  18. Were you inspired by Cassandra Beaver at all for this fun project? Regardless, super fun and I hope you had a great Pi day!

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  19. I love Pi day! Great project :)

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  20. I heard it was Pi Day (after the fact) and thought of you :) Your quilt is so fun and inspired!

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  21. what a lovely colorful quilt to celebrate math!! I love it!

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  22. Love the colors and the texture is great! So clever.

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  23. I love everything about this clever little quilt! Kudos to you, and happy pi day!

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  24. Hi Laura,
    Well, this is the darn coolest thing I've seen for Pi day! I love, love, LOVE the whole thing but especially the backing fabric. Oh my - that is just perfect. I have a good friend that would absolutely adore this! I'm going to PIN this so I can remember to highlight this on my blog next year. ~smile~ Roseanne

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  25. What a lovely idea -- and the little quilt looks so cool! Thanks for sharing how you did it. Happy belated Pi Day!

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  26. What a beautifully unique Pi quilt. 'Hoping your Pi Day was awesome.

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  27. What a cool and fun quilt! I just love it!!
    Susie

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  28. What a great Pi Day quilt! We always had a fun day celebrating it when I was teaching. Those necklaces are super cute! Thanks for linking up with TGIFF!

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  29. I love how the quilting makes the circles pop!!!! So awesome!

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  30. What a fantastic quilt!! I *love* the color coding in it, and WOW - I was certain you trapuntoed those circles and was looking forward to seeing if you had a great shortcut for it. Sure did (ha! - no trapunto!) Who would know?

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  31. The puffs are so cool! I definitely need to try that technique one day :)

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