The Proper Bostonian Quilters Guild has a number of charity projects. One involves making quilts for specific kids, using a theme of their choice. I recently took a look at the list. One teenage boy had requested a quilt which was essentially a STEM theme. (STEM=Science, Technology, Engineering, Math). It had been on the list for a quite a long time. Who has STEM themed fabrics?

I do! The guys in my family are all engineers. So when I see a great technology fabric, I add it to my stash. I have used a number of fabrics designed by Carolyn Friedlander in this quilt. She was trained as an architect before she started her quilting business and many of her fabrics fit nicely into the theme. There is also an Art Gallery fabric, "Manhattan's Dawn" by Leah Duncan, which is a street layout.

I used Cheryl Arkison's pattern, "Stripes" from her book, A Month of Sundays. Her quilt was a mix of blue stripe fabrics. I borrowed the idea of quieter fabrics in the center of the quilt and darker fabrics on each lateral strip of blocks from Score #5, "Rhythmic Grid" in Sherri Lynn Wood's book The Improv Handbook for Modern Quilters. It was fun mixing and matching the designs!

Here's a detail of some of the fabrics and the quilting.

I used a mix of free motion quilting and straight line quilting with the walking foot for this quilt. I let each block in the quilt dictate which to use. That definitely kept the project interesting!

Most of my quilts are lap size. This is a twin bed size. It really helped to have the folding table to the left of the machine to hold the weight of the quilt.

STEM is a great theme! A challenge, but so much fun!