It’s a combination of the Washington and Oregon state quilt blocks, which I guess makes it the Cascadia quilt block? (Sorry BC, but your quilt block is a mess and impossible to work with!) Before you ask: it took about 150 hours to design, chart, and stitch the whole thing.Ĭascadian Star was a quilt star pattern that I came up with while sitting in the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, waiting for a flight that was delayed by three hours, and having a song named Cascadia stuck in my head. It’s done on 18 count Aida using both perle cotton and embroidery floss, and the frame is a hand painted 8″ Mill Hill square frame. This piece was originally conceived after reading Susan Goldstine’s chapter on simple perfect squared blankets in Crafting by Concepts (which is a must-own if you like fiber arts and math). It turns out that historically people don’t tend to stitch things with very little symmetry. Some of the patterns are traditional but most were original. The last 18 squares contain the 12 wallpaper groups and 6 rosette groups without 3-fold symmetry (because 3-fold symmetry can’t be accomplished on a square lattice).
The 2 smallest squares contain the empty set and a point (a French knot). The largest square is filled by patterns representing the 7 frieze groups. The outline is the smallest simple perfect squared square, which is 112 stitches on each side and divided into 21 smaller squares. It showcases all the possible symmetries that can be stitched on Aida/evenweave fabric.
This blackwork sampler is pretty much the most intricate and deeply mathematical thing I’ve stitched. How long did it take the artist to design and stitch this?