Monkeying Around With Numbers

Got a request from Nancy, one of our travel friends, for a new baby quilt.  Her specifications were:
"It’s a boy. The “theme” should be MATH NERDS! The Mom is a high school math teacher and the Dad is a stock broker."!!!

What to do?  I looked around for fabrics with numbers and equations, but couldn't find anything that would work.

It is, after all, a BABY quilt!  So I wanted to satisfy Nancy's parameters but still have something that baby Eli would enjoy.

Finally found a very cute fabric with a pattern of numbers AND monkeys!  What could be better?

But then, what pattern could I use?

I played around and eventually decided to make one up based on a Fibonacci pattern. This is a sequence of numbers that is found in many places in nature!

                                               

You get it by adding the current number to the previous number. So: 0 + 1 = 1   1 + 1 = 2   2 + 1 = 3  3 + 2 = 5   5 + 3 = 8.....and so on.

Here is how it looks graphically.

                                            

If you connect the diagonal corners in each square (using a gentle curve), you get the "nautilus" or "fern" shape.

So...I designed the quilt using the 1," 1", 2", 3", 5", and 8" squares. This gives an 8" x 13" rectangle (as above). When you rotate each group 90 degrees and line up the outer edges, it creates a square in the middle. I used similar looking dotted fabrics in the usual red-orange-yellow-green-blue-purple (rainbow) colors, and put the monkey fabric in the middle square. To clearly separate the Fibonacci sections, I outlined each with a 1/4" mini-sashing in solid blue. I then used the monkey fabric as a wide border (and for the binding).

Quilting was done with rainbow variegated thread. I created cardboard templates with the appropriately sized and shaped curves for each square. Doing so allowed me to pretty accurately sew the Fibonacci curve. And notice the monkey tails and the random Fibonacci-looking swirls by each monkey!

The quilting on the border is a sine wave pattern .

Here is the finished quilt (front and back):

I hope Eli AND mom and dad like it. They can use it to teach him about the beauty and magic of numbers. Nerds rule!

Update:

Baby Eli and friend!!!