Did you know the members of each successively earlier generation of a bee’s family tree are counted by the Fibonacci numbers? Starting with a drone or worker, one bee, there is one parent, the queen. The queen has two parents, a queen and a drone, and between them they have three parents, two queens and a drone. Among those three bees they have five parents, three queens and two drones. And it goes on: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, …
I learned this from a lovely page on the Fibonacci numbers generally, that I found years ago while looking for teaching resources, and it came to mind when quilting friend of mine said she would love to make a Fibonacci quilt, but didn’t have a pattern.
My first design test is a stained glass quilt square. In stained glass quilting, the fabric is bordered by black or dark gray material (usually bias tape) to look like panes of stained glass. My square is 8″x8″ plus a 1/4″ allowance. Except for one corner, all of my “leading” was in straight lines, so I was able to substitute black ribbon for the bias tape I didn’t have. I attached everything with fusible web: Wonder Under for the contrast fabrics and Stitch Witchery, cut into thirds, for the ribbon. Gigantic (A Tale of Two Johns) kept me company.
I started at the top, and was able to hide all cut ribbon ends under other ribbon without any folding except for that lower right corner out in space. That took a fair amount of manipulating and some extra Stitch Witchery, and made me grateful for my retractable tweezer fingers.
My other ideas are more traditional quilt formats, and hence less intriguing to try out, but will follow in later installments.