Seriously..I think it needs stitches.: Science-y Quilt Block

Happy Friday! Fri-yay! And it's a three day weekend! 👏👏👏

Today is National Periodic Table Day! So I made another scrappy quilt block for my National Days scrap quilt.. I briefly considered whether or not making the whole periodic table would be fun... right now, I'm thinking not. hah! These are some small pieces. Smaller than I like to piece with, but then, that makes it SUPER scrap-friendly! Great for those very small scraps.

I picked the element of Gold to make for my block. My son is very science-y.. He loves all things science.. The symbol for Gold is "Au".. Those are the first two letters of his name! (Austin) That's how I landed here. Actually, according to google, "Au" comes from Aurum, which is the Latin word for Gold. I decided to add the atomic number to my block, too, so it would look very official. The atomic number of Gold is 79, which makes it one of the highest naturally occurring atomic numbers.

This led me to google even more, b/c I thought if I was adding the atomic number, I should know what it meant. It turns out, atomic number and atomic weight are two different things. The atomic number represents the number of protons in the nucleus of an atom. The atomic weight of an element is approximately equal to the number of protons and neutrons in an element, with a little extra added by the electrons. That all sounds very confusing to me, and I probably need my 13 y.o. to explain it to me.

Still scrapping along, though, and learning things as I go!

Here's how to make a Gold block for National Periodic Table Day!

Fabric A (background):
(1) 1" sq. (~)
(2) 1 x 2"
(1) 1 x 3 1/2"
(1) 1 1/4 x 3 1/4"
(1) 1 1/4 x 4 1/4"
(1) 1 1/2" sq. (*)
(2) 1 1/2 x 2 1/2" (**)
(1) 1 1/2 x 3 1/4"
(1) 1 1/2 x 4 3/4"
(1) 1 3/4" sq.
(1) 1 3/4 x 2"
(2) 2 3/4 x 3 1/2"
(1) 2 3/4 x 4 3/4"

Fabric B (letters):
(2) 1" sq. (~)
(1) 1 x 1 1/2"
(1) 1 x 2"
(2) 1 x 3"
(1) 1 1/4 x 1 1/2"
(2) 1 1/4 x 1 3/4"
(2) 1 1/4 x 3 1/4"
(2) 1 1/4 x 4 3/4"

This block has zero clip & flip corners, so (using scant quarter inch seams) just assemble the pieces as shown below and you'll have an 8 1/2" (8" finished) quilt block! Be careful, as there are a lot of small pieces that are easy to confuse with other small pieces of similar, but different, size! I had to break out my ripper a couple of times. 🤦

Here's how my finished Gold quilt block for National Periodic Table Day turned out. I found this piece of yellow in my scraps and a strip of this Riley Blake hashtag fabric for the letters that worked perfectly.

If you're just finding these blocks and would like to see the others (this is number 26!), you can find them all on the National Days page where I'm linking all of the National Days quilt blocks to keep them organized. My ultimate goal is 144 blocks by the end of the year, inspired by the National Days calendar, and completely using scraps. This will give me a 109" sq. king size scrap quilt if I piece the top with a 1" sashing.

If you make any blocks from this or the other free sew alongs (Harry Potter/Minecraft/Pokemon), come find me on IG so I can see! (@kellifanninquilts) If you want to see blocks and/or meet lots of really kind, helpful quilters, come join the sew along group on my FB page!

I hope your weekend is GOLD!

Happy Stitching!

xoxo

1 comments...:

Katie said...

Love this! I teach chemistry to my 8th graders. Elements have both protons and neutrons in their nucleus. Some can have more neutrons than protons and can have different isotopes with varying neutrons. The atomic mass is the average of all the naturally occurring isotopes. Electrons don’t really have a mad as they are sooooooo tiny. Why wouldn’t you do a whole periodic table? Just the time it took? Small pieces? When I saw the gold I was like “I have got to make one of these as a whole table!” Now to figure out how to make a pattern for each. Would have been cool last year as that was the year of the periodic table. But I was busy enough making Harry. ��

February 7, 2020 at 7:23 PM