Fibonacci Quilt

I have always been fascinated by the Fibonacci sequence. I thought it might be fun to design and build a quilt for my king size bed that incorporated the sequence. It was a painstaking process to design a repeatable pattern that could be used as a quilting block that when assembled would match the total dimension I was looking for.
I developed a pattern using 1-1-2-3-5-8 for each block and also for the quilt itself. So essentially it’s a geometric Fibonacci quilt.

Fabric, thread, cutter, scissors, cutting board, measuring tape, pins, sewing machine, iron and ironing board, Patience.

I wanted to somehow resemble nature, especially the swirl patterns we often see in flowers. But, i was constrained by needing straight edges to fit my straight edged bed. So, I came up with this. See photo.

Patches are outlined in red. The arrows show the progression in a swirl pattern.

Each patch in the block has area equal to a number in my abbreviated Fibonacci sequence 1-1-2-3-5-8. Each of the "1" patches equals 1 unit. The "2" patch equals 2 units, and so on.

I then thought about the overall assembly of the quilt and that I could assemble it using the same pattern.....

To stay within the dimensions of the king size bed, and knowing the standard widths of fabric - i knew my overall dimensions needed to be approximately 100"x120". So through some trial and error, and allowing for edging, I determined that each block needed to be approximately 8.5"x10.5".

Since I wanted to assemble the entire quilt in the same pattern as the block, I needed to ratio up the overall "patches" by a factor of 4. So what was a 1 unit patch on the individual block became a 4 unit section on the overall quilt. the 2 unit patch became an 8 unit section on the overall quilt, and so on. See photo.

I needed:

• 4 blocks in fabric collection 1
• 4 blocks in fabric collection 2
• 8 blocks in fabric collection 3
• 12 blocks in fabric collection 4
• 20 blocks in fabric collection 5
• 32 blocks in fabric collection 6

i also decided to outline each section with a contrasting fabric so that the sections would stand out just a little more.

Choose fabric for outside edging and corners. Use the outside edging for final adjustments needed to fit overall dimension.

I purchased enough fabric for the back and enough different colors of cotton fabric to create enough differently colored blocks to achieve my pattern. I also purchased thread, quilt batting and new sharp blades

This took HOURS. I was efficient by cutting in assembly line style and had stacks of small pieces of fabric all over.

Lots of sewing and pressing and sewing and pressing.

The first photo above shows a closeup of an individual block.

The second photo shows a closeup of one of the "1" sections (4 blocks make this one section)

The third photo shows the final project: a quilt assembled in a Fibonacci sequence with blocks that were sewn in the same Fibonacci sequence. It's a sequence within a sequence!

The fourth photo shows an overlay of the number of blocks that are in each section - it is a Fibonacci sequence starting with 4: 4-4-8-12-20-32

I'm happy to report that it's in use on my bed and keeps me toasty warm!