Never Too Young to Learn About Black Holes. Or to Make Them.

I've been playing with wrapping quilt fabric around batting scraps, and weaving them into baskets. Just in time for the holidays, I made a couple of black holes this way, including one for this guy:

I was inspired by a talk at Cal Tech last month by Kip Thorne, who won a Nobel Prize in 2017 for creating LIGO, the project that detected gravitational waves emanating from colliding black holes. (My DH works on this project.) 

Instead of resting on his laurels, Kip has been having a blast producing black hole art, including movies (Interstellar, and soon, a sequel); and a massive poetry/art book with fine artist Lia Halloran. It's titled "The Warped Side of Our Universe: An Odyssey Through Black Holes, Wormholes, Time Travel, and Gravitational Waves." Halloran illustrates the elusive concepts with elegant brush paintings, and paints her wife into many of the phenomena. (You can watch the talk I attended here.)

This gave me the courage to go for it, using black-and-gold fabrics from my stash, wrapped around 1" batting scraps. Here's my grandbaby's, looking straight in: 

Here's the entire playset. 

The space entities are fused and zig-zagged to black felt. The green thing is a former parachutist, now an exceptionally brave, strong, dumb, lucky, and immortal astronaut. He dives into the black hole:

...then emerges from the other end...

...Perfectly flat. 

OK, this isn't scrupulous science. For one thing, DH informs me, the black hole would not flatten him (like Flat Stanley's bookcase); rather, it would spaghettify him. 

Other play options include sucking in the Earth, a satellite/death star, Saturn, and lots of other stuff.

I was eagerly anticipating the baby's reaction , and he didn't disappoint! Here, DH provides the scientific narration. (A truncated cuboctahedron matzoh ball makes a cameo appearance.)

Plus, I feel strongly that this same playset could be used to illustrate the miracle of uterine birth. 

Here's the second black hole I made. This one's a little bigger; it isn't open at the narrow end. It doubles as a party purse. I put buttons and a fabric closure around the rim. It's got a handy strap. Unfortunately, at 7" across and 10" long, it's not big enough to hold my cellphone, so it's essentially useless.

Closer: 

And here it is with the lid on: 

Interested in making your own? See my first post about my basket-making technique here,  and the video version on youtube, here.

Are Bellydancer Coins Appropriate for Chanukah? And Thank You Target!

Shameless self-promotion, as well as promotion of Target stores (no financial affiliation with the latter):

Chanukah looms! It starts the night of December 7! It just occurred to me that I must locate my quilted fiber art dreidels, but finding them may not be easy. So instead of starting the search, I procrastinated by looking for my PHOTOS of quilted dreidels, to see if I needed to take new shots. I came upon this very nice photo:

The photo was taken in 2018, for my pattern booklet "Quilted Treasure Dreidels". Upon close inspection, I realized the coins I'd used as props were bellydancer coins, featuring  curvaceous humans who don't appear to be wearing a tremendous amount of clothing.

Does this completely defeat the original intent of Chanukah?  Does Judaism have room for, or a history of, bellydancing? (My mom took a bellydancing class in the 1970s, when it was all the rage.) I'm thinking this might have pissed off the Maccabees. 

While pondering this issue, and if you don't have time to make Chanukah presents, consider a field trip to Target. (No financial affiliation). I was stunned and thrilled when we walked into Target/Alhambra (in the San Gabriel Valley of California, hardly a Jewish neighborhood) last week, and right in front of the door was a shelf of Chanukah stuff -- plus, there was another long shelf-full on the other end of the store, right behind the Christmas stuff! Thank you Target! I showed my gratitude by buying one of everything, including a crinkly fibrous stuffed dreidel on the bottom left of this picture, which is a cat toy! (Their wares included had a half-dozen cat and dog toys, it was hard deciding!)

If you might prefer to make your own soft dreidel, see more photos of my quilted dreidels at https://www.etsy.com/listing/652897119/quilted-treasure-dreidel-sewing-pattern. Hag sameach, happy holidays!

My First Tumbler Quilt! (Not Tumbling Blocks)

First, in case you are as confused as I was, a "Tumbler" quilt is  completely different from a "Tumbling Blocks" quilt! 

"Tumbling Blocks" are made from 60 degree triangles and diamonds, and wind up with a 3D effect. They're great fun to look at, but technically can be a bear to make. I don't even remember how I pulled off the blocks below, from a Tokyo-themed quilt I made in the 90s, called "Sushi in the Sky with Diamonds." 

I must have had a much higher tolerance for mitering in those days. On that same quilt, I also threw on some hollow tumbling blocks, carrying little passengers cut from Japanese fabric. 

But in three decades of quilting I never made a much easier-looking "Tumbler" quilt, whose patches are shaped like - guess what kind of glassware? 

Until now! Here it is. Made as part of my emergency response to the massive baby tsunami happening among my family and friends since the Covid era began.

What made this quilt possible was a wonderful craft thrift shop, Remainders, in Pasadena, California, which has every kind of fiber art notion from the past 50 years. Remainders sells them at such reasonable prices that if I don't like it, I just donate it back to them to sell again! It's like a lending library of sewing stuff!

Specifically, I found this:

It's Marti Michell's "One-derful One-Patch Templates" They're $23 new at Joanns, but half that price at other retailers (which makes the price only a few dollars more than I paid at Remainders.) 

You may ask, "Why would I need to buy a Tumbler template when I can perfectly well cut a tumbler shape out of a Cheerios Box?" And I asked myself the same question. Then I tried it, and my newly-educated answer is, "This template rocks!" 

First, it's thick acrylic, so unlike a cereal box, you won't trim it with each piece you cut. Second and more mysteriously compelling: The template has these two little jogs in the lower outer corners, on the wider end. Look closely at that bottom right edge in the photo above - the template is not quite straight there. 

When you cut the shape with these slight extra angles, they piece together much more cleanly than if they didn't have the extra angles. If you understand why, please explain it to me!

UPDATE! Several alert readers have explained it to me - Tumblers have strange little dog ears. Reader mary greene (who doesn't capitalize her name) sent me to this tutorial by Nancy Zieman. If you scroll down to the section titled "Construction," the third photo below that subtitle, you see the tiny dog ear on the bottom right that's created if you don't have a shaped template. Because Michell's template has you trim that first, the pieces' alignment is less confusing! By the way, mary has a hilarious blog, where her favorite post is "Two Dog Shirts for 50 Cents," here. 

I also found many of the fabrics for this quilt from Remainders,  of course supplemented them with pieces from my own exhaustive, exhausting, library of novelty prints.  

I debated whether to include popcorn (upper left in photo below), since it's a baby choking hazard, but hopefully by the time the baby is old enough to comprehend a picture of popcorn, they will be old enough to safely eat some. Also, the parents could lie and claim they're floating yellow teddy bears.

Every baby quilt should include mooses (above left).

Below, the back. I like putting fabrics that I don't have the heart to cut up into small pieces on the back.

I decided to give the back an astrophysics, fish and pet theme. 

My great debate with myself with this quilt was whether to leave the sides zig-zag, or cut the edges even, thereby losing half of each outer side row. And speaking of pets, my grand-cat assisted me in scrutinizing this important issue closely.

I finally decided to leave the zigzag sides. I cut the binding from bias. At the four corners, I turned the bias the exact same way as for a regular 90 degree corner. And for the gentle ins and outs on the sides, there was no need to take the quilt out of the machine. Just stop on each outermost and innermost point, needle down, and swivel to the next direction, turning the bias along with the rest of the quilt. It's surprisingly easy! 

Tumbler quilts do take a little more time than square-based baby quilts - but with a sturdy-yet-mysterious Marti Michell template, they're relatively fast and a lot of fun. (No financial affiliation). I'll hold onto my new favorite template for a while and see what babies come along next! 

My New Eye Bowl

Pass the Visine! Here's my new Eye Bowl!

The name is inspired by the orange Tula Pink fabric covering the small diamonds. I drove the point home (because too much is never enough for me) by placing glass eye beads on half the outer shapes. 

It's entirely English Paper Pieced. Before embellishment, it looked like this:

Afterwards, along with the beads and buttons on top, I added danglies below.

 Lower.

 The back: 

Pure fun! I showed a different polygon-based bowl in my last blog entry, here. All my techniques and many more ideas (but not this exact project) are in my polyhedron book, "Stitch-a-hedron"; more information is here. 

My New English Paper Pieced Basket, Roof Optional

Here's my new thing! It's English Paper Pieced canopied basket...


....which can keep the dust off your giant, color-coordinated thread cone...

...or help you find your measuring tape...

Or stuff with faux flowers....

With you inside, it's a bulky bangle bracelet!

...which doubles as a wee, insecure handbag (needs a zippered lining)....

The shape is a modified truncated cuboctahedron. Here's what it would have looked like if it were a complete polyhedron (closed up, without the handle):

Can you see the family resemblance to this stuffed and complete truncated cuboctahedron pincushion?

I made the pincushion for my book, Stitch-a-hedron; English Paper Pieced Polyhederon Gifts and Accessories to Sew.  A complete truncated cuboctahedron contains 6 octagons, 12 squares, and 8 hexagons. On the pincushion, I made each shape in a different color.

For the covered basket, I used a different luscious metallic Klimt-themed quilters' cotton for each outside shape. Inside, I used dupioni silks. The outer shapes are basted around stiff fusible interfacing; for the lining, the fabric is basted around flexible medium-weight interfacing. Here's how the outside (left) and lining (right) looked like before insertion:

Here's the handle, with one end attached to the body of the basket. The final step - stitching the square at the top to the dark hexagonal piece on front - was tricky. 

I'm also thinking that without the handle, I could have put a drawstring bag inside the form (with no handle) to make an evening purse. It would look something like this.

 I'm on a roll with English Paper Pieced polyhedron accessories, mainly because I've been working on a difficult large quilt that required many complicated decisions - polyhedrons, by contrast, are rapid gratification. Last week I made a Valentine's hexagon-and-pentagon EPP dish, here. And another one is coming up soon! More info about my approach and my polyhedron book is here.

Impulse English Paper Pieced Heart Dish

I always get in a Valentine's Day mood at the last minutes. Here's the impulse project I made yesterday, an English Paper Pieced dish that can serve as a pincushion:

...or a thimble holder:

...or maybe an embroidery thread basket....

Or, pile it with chocolates for your sweetie. Here's how I constructed it. There's stiff fusible interfacing inside each piece; both sides are covered with fabric. 

The bowl takes shape when you sew up the side seams. 

Last, I did a bit of embellishment with the variegated embroidery thread in the ball above.

If you'd like to make this project, and you have any kind of hexagon and pentagon templates, you just need one hexagon and six pentagons, each with the same size edges - mine were 1". I redrew the top drawing below into the second drawing, altering the pentagons into soft heart shapes. Each piece is made up of two back-to-back EPPed forms, one with stiff fusible interfacing inside.

By the way, you can also cut this out of one piece of cardstock, for a fun paper project. Score and fold on the lines, instead of cutting the pieces apart.
My step-by-step method for English Paper piecing fabric bowls and other 3D forms - though not this exact project - is in my book, "Stitch-a-hedron, English Paper Piecing Polyhedron Gifts and Accessories to Sew," on etsy in digital form for instant download here; and on Amazon as a paperback, here. Wishing you a sweet holiday!