Remarkable Rectangles: Deceptively Simple Strip-Pieced Quilts

Bob DeCarli's first life was as a math professor at a Catholic girls college in Buffalo, New York. He moved on to function as an engineer at Lockheed Martin in Valley Forge, all the while continuing to teach math at local colleges. In 1992, his wife, Kathleen, asked for help in making a quilt for their daughter's wedding. She showed him how to make a four-patch unit, and he was hooked. As a mathmatician, the seemingly endless number of patterns fascinated him. He has designed blocks and quilts since 1993, receiving a ribbon at the Vermont Quilt Festival and a blue ribbon at the Pennsylvania Quilt Extravaganza for "Butterfly."

He discovered Electric Quilt in 2005 (in fact, he used EQ5 to design his prizewinning "Butterfly"), and has since designed more than 1,000 quilts and blocks, including block and quilt settings for his wife's appliqué projects. His primary interest, besides teaching, is designing various sizes of interlocking Log Cabin designs. In each area, the number of possibilities knows no limits, but he pursues them one at a time.