By the time you finish with this chapter and Chapter 11 of this book, it will become apparent to you that one of us is a quiltmaker. So I will confess right up front that I am the guilty party. My interest in quiltmaking really began before birth, because my mother was working on a king-size quilt when I was in utero. Sometime just before I left for college, the quilt-making bug bit me really hard, and I could be found in all my spare time with a pile of fabric squares on my lap and a needle in my hand. I have never been a person who could sit still easily!

While I was in graduate school, I satisfied my artistic urges by studying painting three mornings a week at nearby Wellesley College, which I had attended as an undergraduate. It was a relief to escape the relentless pace of M.I.T. for a few hours, and to use the other half of my brain (while enjoying the company of women, a rare treat for me in those days). Looking back on it, I should not be surprised that the things I painted ended up being rather geometrical; my artistic expressions involved shape, color, and pattern. When I moved to Pasadena and then on to Oregon, I returned to

quilt making, applying the lessons I learned from oil and acrylics to the medium of fabric. Now I make art quilts in my free time (what little free time I have!); hopefully someday I will find the time to exhibit them in shows.

Many years ago I took a quilt-making class from a wonderful artist named Margaret Miller. As an exercise, she assigned the task of arranging our triangular pieces on a wall in various patterns: all facing the same way, rotating in alternate directions, pointing up and pointing down, etc. Somewhere in this exercise I realized that we were simply running the gamut of possible symmetry operations. It was then that I had one of those personal epiphanies about myself. For me, science and art are interconnected. What I love about quilt-making is the same thing I love about crystallography: the variety of combinations that can be made from some very simple, geometrically-constrained actions like rotation and inversion. Soon thereafter I discovered a book by Ruth B. McDowell called Symmetry: A Design System for Quiltmakers (1994), as well as an old library book of Escher patterns converted into quilt patterns, and my

happiness was complete. Since then, I have found artistic expression in endless arrangements and rearrangements of bits of fabric—and I am always conscious of the symmetry of the pattern I’m working on. If a quilt design isn’t working, I perform a symmetry operation or two, and something good always happens. The results have even been known to appear as exercises on mineralogy exams. Yes, science can be warm and fuzzy!

The moral of the story is that the rules governing crystallography are timeless and broadly applicable. Don’t ever assume, as I once did, that the things you learn in mineralogy (or any) class are bits of knowledge to be compartmentalized and sealed up for use exclusively in final exams and, perhaps, stored away for subsequent classes within some narrow discipline. The study of crystallography should enhance your awareness of the world of patterns that exists all around you: in brick walls, wallpaper, floor tiles, bedspreads, all kinds of art, and even plant life. There are intellectual connections in the offering everywhere, if only you take the time to look for them.


M.D.D.