Happy Pi Day!

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

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If you're new here, hello! I'm Laura! I design quilt patterns, and I'm a self-proclaimed deal hunter! Be sure to join the popular Quilting & Sewing Deals Facebook group where I post sales, deals, and coupon codes from all around the web!

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!

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!

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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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