Geek Quilts for Paul and Ben

This summer Amanda and I did a mini-makeover of Paul and Ben's room. She repainted their room using a very light gray, and then we made these quilts. She pieced Ben's (the green one), and I did Paul's. Since they both are junior gearheads, we decided to use the Mastermind fabrics from Connecting Threads using their "Piece of Cake" pattern. (I was able to use a gift certificate from Christmas to buy the fabric!)

The fabric patterns are gears,

 robots,

  electric circuit boards,

 transistor waves (not shown) and resistor stripes.

I wanted to continue the geek theme in the quilting, so I put sine and cosine waves (machine quilted) on the borders. 

But what to do on the corners? I couldn't figure out how to make the sine/cosine waves make the turns. So instead, I decided to fill the corners with equations and the boys' names. (They were quilted, then embroidered.)

Ben shows his name

The other corners have some familiar equations:
.

And some maybe not quite so familiar:

Ideal gas law

Velocity equation

The equations above are for the boys, but I slipped in one just for me. This expression, to my warped mind, somehow summarizes the life of a mom:

Because it is not any one single thing we do that defines our lives, but the sum total. And it is not any single task that so often brings the bone weariness at the end of the day, but the sum total. But more than anything, it is not any one of  the sometimes marvelous and exhilarating, sometimes mundane or even gut-wrenching things we do in loving and serving our families that brings such an incomparable richness and joy, but the sum total. I wouldn't trade this life for any other.