Friday, January 14, 2011

Fun-a-day 14: Malaria and "twisted" 9-patch quilt


Malaria is a disease that I myself have only really seen once in all of my years in the lab.  It is a parasite that is spread through mosquito bites, and in the United States, mosquito control programs have made malaria almost non-existent here.  But in many tropical and sub-tropical regions of the world, malaria is a real threat, and causes millions of people to get very ill and sometimes die.  Most of the malaria cases diagnosed in the US are from people who have traveled from areas where malaria is present.  Indeed, the one case I "found" in our lab was from such a traveler.  A doctor can also order a malaria smear if they suspect this in their patient.  But malaria is a disease that "waxes and wanes", so a negative smear won't completely rule it out.

The malaria parasite spends part of its life cycle in the human red blood cell.  Other life cycles forms can be seen on a blood smear, but the "ring form" is the most common.  These little tiny rings can be seen inside of the red blood cell.  Luckily there is treatment for malaria, and ways to prevent it.

I made my red blood cells really big so that I could try to make the ring form of malaria easier to see and sew.  Once again, I got a bit frustrated trying to draw something using thread and fabric that is seen on a slide under a light microscope.  But hey, I'm learning a little bit each day!

Speaking of learning, I though I'd share a quick tutorial of a "twisted" 9-patch quilt that I just finished.  I was itching to get it done, as the blocks were finished a few months ago, but put away as I worked on Christmas presents.  I finished the top yesterday, and my husband was home today for lunch and helped me get a good picture of it (even though it was a bit windy).  One thing this quilt taught me is that black isn't all black.  I had some black fabric that I bought in Michigan, and used this all up.  When I bought what I thought was the closest match here in Oregon, only after sewing it all together did I really notice the difference!  Oh well...
A friend of mine told me about this technique about a year ago.  After seeing it on many blogs and in local quilt shows, I decided to make one myself.  It's super-easy and looks great when finished!  When a local store had a sale on fat quarters, I bought 8 of the blue batik fat quarters, then cut out 4, 9 x 9 inch squares from each of them, so I had 32 in all.  I took 2 yards of black fabric and cut out 32, 9 inch squares, and half a yard of the yellow batik, and cut out 8, 9 inch squares.  I sewed them all in 9 patch blocks like this:

Then I cut each of these 9-patch blocks in half both vertically and horizontally, like this:

Now I had 4 smaller blocks.  I twisted them and rearranged them into rows of 5 across, then sewed 6 of these rows together.  I had 2 left over small blocks.  I hope that makes sense.  If you haven't sewed one up yet, do it!  This one was so fun and easy!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am very familiar with Malaria, as my husband's family are missionaries in three different countries in Africa. His father has Malaria and it never really goes away...it can get better and worse...he can become very ill at times. It's so sad that it's so rampant. =(

The quilt top looks amazing! Sorry about the different blacks...that would be frustrating. =(

Beth@IHaveANotion.com said...

Malaria is a common disease in Africa, and in many areas, (where mosquitos are present) we must take 'anti' malaria drugs.

Yellow Fever us also on the rise in Africa, so anyone planning a visit... just get the shot before leaving!

and the quilt is great... good thing it has a scrappy-look... the odd blacks... look fine in it.

Becky said...

It's amazing what we take for granted isn't it? Malaria and Yellow Fever were endemic in New Orleans many years ago, where I used to live. I remember doing a ecology/sociology project in college studying the mass grave statistics (where many poor people were buried) and trying to correlate it with different outbreaks there back in the 1800's. So many of these diseases have been "taken care of" in the US, but not other places. My parasitology course in med tech school was such an eye-opener. We're so lucky here!

Becky Wolsk said...

Thank you so much for taking the time to do the twisted nine-patch tutorial. Your pictures are really helpful. I will soon post a blog entry about a charity quilt I'm doing that started off as a disappearing nine-patch design before veering away from D9P....

Susan said...

I like your twisted 9 patch! I traveled to India 20 years ago and faithfully took my malaria pills the entire time to avoid getting it - but I did pick up a lovely case of Delhi-belly! That was no fun but was over fairly quick. Still enjoying your fun-a-day blocks. :)