Mathematical Quilts

Some of my work...




The Text For Nature's Numbers
- Numerical structure, beauty, and pattern
existed long before humans named the numbers. Studying patterns in nature
leads us to discover the Fibonacci numbers. The Italian mathematician
Eduoard Lucas, an eighteenth-century mathematician named the number pattern
1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89...the Fibonacci sequence, after Leonardo de Pisa.
The number pattern shows up in the plants in the quilt: the sunflower, the pineapple,
the coneflower, the pinecone, the leaf lettuce and the artichoke. When counted, the spirals in these plants are always Fibonacci numbers. The cross-section of the celtry
plant illustrates how nature uses the 137.5 degree angle in positioning stems on
the plant. The 137.5 degree angle is related to the Fibonacci numbers.



Delightfully Dutch Dissection - In this Dutch Chintz quilt, the heart and the ellipse
are the focus of the one-point perspective.  The heart and ellipse are part of a
twisted hinge dissection.  A dissection is made from cutting a figure and repositioning it.
If the heart is cut in half so each part of the heart matches up with the other, one
of the parts can be rotated through l80 degrees in space.  The resulting figure is
the ellipse!  Likewise, half of the ellipse can be rotated to form the heart! 
Purdue Professor Greg Frederickson inspired this fascinating quilt.





Magnetite and Hematite - safe drinking water is paramount to human survival.
Natural and anthropogenic sources of heavy metals reaching drinking water sources may lead to undesirable health effects of the human population. Current bulk treatment technologies do not adequately remove all heavy metals from solution, are expensive,
and use many resources. Nanoparticle metal oxides, such as hematite and magnetite, are being explored in environmental engineering applications for their metallic
characteristics and great aDsorbing capabilities. Synthesized in nature and in the
laboratory, metal oxides at the nanoparticle scale (one nanometer is one
billionth of a meter) may prove to be alternative, cost-effective,
environmentally-friendly and highly efficient reusable sorbents to remove
heavy metal pollutants from drinking water sources. The surface area to
volume ratio increases as the particles are brought down to nanoscale,
causing some of their physical properties (e.g. magnetism, sorption capabilities)
to be dramatically enhanced.




Tiled Torus - The work of John Sharp and Craig S. Kaplan at past Bridges Conferences inspired me to create Tiled Torus.  The tiles morph  from left to right along with morphing from the top to the bottom of the quilt. The parquet deformation turned out to be a design that would tile a torus.  I noticed that the left and the right hand side of the design were continuous.  This is also true about the top and the bottom of the quilt!



Some quilts are for sale - please contact Elaine at eellisonelaine@yahoo.com for more information and prices.