Looking Forwards and Back

It's that time of year when the days are notably shorter and around the corner is the return to "Standard Time." We don't know about the rest of the planet, but "Daylight Savings Time" is nearing an end here in the States (Except for most of Arizona--we don't do that as we don't need to save sunlight, we could use blessedly less of it in summer!).

Sunset by
Brian Bender
wunderground.com

That's important for two reasons. One, we've already begun our planning for next year and have posted the prompts for all of 2016! And two, the inspiration for this week's word is supposedly and decidedly an American-originated concept: quilting. The pioneer women would piece together patches of fabric to create blankets and from "crazy," haphazard piecing came patterns.
There are plenty of complicated patterns out there, but "Nine-Patch," is one of the first, dating to early or mid 19th century and one of the simplest--three rows of three columns of squares.

Double Nine-Patch
Squares of Nine-Patch in a
Nine-Patch Pattern

Once you know the "rules," you can break them:

Disappearing Nine-Patch inside
Disappearing Nine-Patch

It's not a pattern that is expressly and solely associated with fabric.
There's glass:

Paper:

Chittlechattle.com

A total (diet) spoiler (Food as canvas):

We think everyone's a winner
in this game!
cupcakepedia.com

Computer program?

Nine-Patch for Android
Tutorial

Makes our collective neurons hurt! But you know us! We have to find off-the-wall, out-of-the-box
investigations as part of our on-going research. (For the record, we understand the underlying concept, but we were lost after the first word of the instructions. You know? Anything after "The...").

We've updated the last post, so check that out when you have a chance.

I was going to put that stuff here, but that would make things disorganized for the long term. And anyone who knows me, knows how organized I am (not! I'm going to grow up to be one of those crazy cat ladies who needs an intervention for 'stuff').

So show us your nine-patches in whatever medium you should choose! You know the deal--two inches!
Send your images of them to 1xeritas@gmail.com by Tuesday at 2PM Arizona Time (which never waivers), November 3, 2015. Include your blog post or what-have-yous for sharing!