Finishing Radiation

I finished another of the five projects! Hooray. One of the last steps was to finish the edges. I decided to add a wide fused green binding to the bottom edge and coordinating fused binding to the other edges.

Here's the bottom binding. Umm... not quite right.

Simple fix. Much better.

That additional free motion stitching softens the line between the brown and the green and ties in the mustard color of the stones.

So, here it is all finished. It's called Radiocarbon Dating: Oldest Living Tree.

Here are some detail shots. Some of those flower shapes are stamped with red paint, some simply stitched with red thread and one is red fabric. The eye should follow the red flower, to the red line in the graph, then to the red in the carbon molecule.

I really enjoyed the hand embroidery in the foreground section.

This chart represents the rate of decay of carbon-14. The white dot (French knot) represents where this tree would fall on the graph.

Here's a carbon-14 molecule. You can also see my fused blue binding. I took some additional yellow stitches over the binding to continue the trail of the electrons around the nucleus.

Close up of the nucleus (the large tulle circle), the protons (the blue circles with the yellow plus sign), the neutrons (the red circles) and the electrons (the painted yellow circles with the yellow stitched lines showing their paths around the nucleus).

The tree goes by the name "old tjikko" and is 9,550 years old. That info is stitched here. (The blue in this picture is less accurate.)

One last close up showing a bit of one of the clouds and some of the location of the tree, Dalarna, Sweden.

This quilt will be mailed off to Europe tomorrow for its premiere at the International Conference of Radiation Safety.

Are you wondering how it fits the radiation theme? To date an artifact, scientists use radiation detectors to measure carbon-14. After an organism dies, carbon-14 continues to decay without being replaced. To measure the amount of radiocarbon left in a artifact, scientists burn a small piece to convert it into carbon dioxide gas. Radiation counters are used to detect the electrons given off by decaying C-14 as it turns into nitrogen. The amount of C-14 is compared to the amount of C-12, the stable form of carbon, to determine how much radiocarbon has decayed, thereby dating the artifact.

I explore many of these techniques in my book Art Quilt Collage: A Creative Journey in Fabric, Paint and Stitch.

Tactile Architecture
Done!

Radiation
Done!

Tall Me
In the works
I'll be posting lots of info about it tomorrow.

Coming Up Roses
Not entering. And I'm ok with that.

Festival of Quilt Art: Home
Still in the ideas stage.

And guess what... I've got one more project to add to my list. So it went from five projects, to four projects when I decided not to enter Coming Up Roses, now it's back to five projects. More on that later this week.