Stephen Eberhart Memorial Quilt – A Proposal

Year: 2004 Authors: Mary Candace Williams

Core claim

A quilt can memorialize Stephen Eberhart by encoding mod 13 arithmetic into a symmetric textile design using solid colors and patterned fabrics.

Topics

memorial quilt, mod 13 coloring, P4G symmetry, community fabrication

Domains

modular arithmetic, symmetry, number theory, textile art, quilt design, color theory

Methods

sample prototypes, grid construction, color-to-fabric mapping, participant contribution

Media

cotton, fabric prints, sewing machine

Paper text

The text below is the locally extracted OCR/Markdown version of the paper. Raw PDF files remain local and are not published here.

BRIDGES Mathematical Connections in Art, Music, and Science

Stephen Eberhart Memorial Quilt – A Proposal

Mary Candace Williams 8962 E Sugar Sumac St. Tucson AZ 85747 merynda54@hotmail.com

Since Stephen had such an impact on everyone involved with Math Art, I propose a memorial quilt in his honor. In Baltimore in 2002, he had his diagrams of the article he had in Bridges 89 concerning using color as the artistic method of showing $d=(x\ast x+y\ast y)$ to $\frac{1}{2}$ mod several numbers.

I made three samples and sent them to Stephen. There was one he liked best so that is the form the quilt will take.

Using mod 13 and the above as the upper right quadrant cell for a P4G symmetry the quilt would be $14\times 14$ and need 196 pieces each a 2.5 inches by 2.5 inches. Cotton is the common quilt material. It could be made larger if we get more people involved. Basically I would like everybody to bring fabric that reminds him or her of Stephen. If everyone brings or sends fabric to Bridges this summer, I can bring/borrow a sewing machine and we can have it together by the end of the conference.

COLOR SCHEME

0 = Black 1 = White 2 = Yellow 3 = Red 4 = $2\times 2=$ Yellow print on Yellow fabric 5 = Blue 6 = $2\times 3=$ Red print on yellow fabric or Yellow print on red fabric 7 = Violet 8 = $2\times 2\times 2=$ Dark yellow print on yellow fabric 9 = $3\times 3=$ Red print on red fabric 10 = $2\times 5=$ Green print 11 = Brown 12 = $2\times 2\times 3=$ Yellow print on orange fabric

The color to fabric transition is that a prime number is a solid color while a composite number is a print composed of the prime factors. Since 0 and 1 are neither prime nor composite, they may be solid or they may be prints.

2004 Bridges Proceedings