When I sat down to write this post, I had no clue which block to pick. So I started surfing the Net, procrastinating. One of my favorite places to waste time is Wikipedia. Today the featured article was on William Tecumseh Sherman. Funny, I thought. Earlier today I was playing around with self-similarity in quilts, and Sherman’s March was one that worked well. So, Sherman’s March it is.
The block name obviously dates from the Civil War, but the block itself is much older. Other names include Monkey Wrench or Double Monkey Wrench, Hole in the Barn Door, Shoo-fly, Love Knot, Lincoln’s Platform, Puss in the Corner.
According to Wikipedia (told you I liked that site), “a self-similar object is exactly or approximately similar to a part of itself, e.g., the whole has the same shape as one or more of the parts. Many objects in the real world, such as coastlines, are statistically self-similar: parts of them show the same statistical properties at many scales. Self-similarity is a typical property of fractals.”
I’ve tried to design a fractal quilt or two, without much success. At least, not with a pieced version. I might be able to design an appliqued or foundation-pieced fractal quilt, but I haven’t gotten that far yet. Until then, I guess I’ll have to be satisfied with self-similarity instead.
“Sherman Advances”–A 68″ x 68″self-similar quilt based on the Sherman’s March block.
This entry was posted on Monday, August 6th, 2007 at 11:41 am and is filed under Blocks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.