Layer Cake Quadrant Symmetry

 Four Quadrant Symmetry

Per a Just Get It Done Quilts links, for Stashbuster #6, one of the key techniques in a layer cake quilt design is to employ symmetry to help construct four mirror-image quadrants. The number of blocks should be divisible by two in in both the vertical and horizontal directions or four in total. Karen does a better job of explaining symmetry by way of example anyway in her YouTube video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k35lnxpIyWc.

My layer cake had 40 squares so I removed four and only worked with 36 squares; each quadrant will have a 3x3 array of nine blocks. I first wanted to distribute four scissor squares and, since I only had one of each, I would need to put a quarter of each square in each quadrant. I picked three other fabrics that I would use to make up the remaining three-quarters of each block. In the following photo the folded fabric is will be quartered and will be distributed into four blocks - sixteen blocks in total - that will distribute evenly among the four quilt quadrants.

These are the 4 blocks from the the lower right pile with the orange scissors on the lime background. The blocks have a symmetry about the horizontal axis and about the vertical axis. I did the same arrangement for the remaining 12 blocks from the other three piles.

Here is a second example for a distribution of the mottled background with the orange scissors. Thus I get four axi-symmetric blocks from one feature fabric print.

For prints for which I have only two squares, I make four half blocks as shown in the following photo.

My original intent was to make zig zags going only horizontal, but then I goofed and cut one square in half in the orthogonal direction. I corrected by cutting it again and making some four patch blocks. I could have kept all zig zag horizontal if I should so choose. (But I didn't.)

Then came the arranging of the 36 blocks. I thought I could do just one quadrant at a time, nine blocks, and save myself the work of moving and changing 36 blocks. Here are nine blocks, one of my later compositions. My first few attempts were awful, a cacophony that looked like random junk, not artful improv. These tries were even too hideous to photograph. During this time period I was undergoing infusion chemotherapy (6/13/14) and my thinking was pretty cattywampus... so much so I contemplated naming the quilt Chemo Chaos. 

It turns out I just could not bring myself to visualize the quadrant repeated in the other three orientations. I did have to lay out all the blocks at once to see it. They do look improved once seamed together.

It is then the secondary patterns emerge: four small orange diamonds, one large central green diamond, and an encircling red octagon.

It will be a while before I back and quilt this. But I did test out Karen Brown's theory of two-axis  symmetry for layer cakes. I was initially a skeptic but I acknowledge now that it can work. It worked even with my layer cake that displayed very little value difference in its components. I am even rethinking the name Chemo Chaos.