Sunday, February 9, 2014

Dimensional Chevron quilt: Process post

I saw a design on a wall in a building from the 1920s, but was not in a position to take a good photograph. This was what I got with my camera:
I could see that the effect was accomplished by using a light, dark and medium to make it look dimensional (the photograph does not do it justice). But I wasn't sure, just looking at it briefly, how to figure out what the dimensions of the block should be or how to calculate it. So I set about with paper and pen trying to recreate the design to see how to put it together. Since it was tri-lateral (is that a word?) I decided the angle was probably 60 degrees (1/3 of 180 degrees) - see? My high school trigonometry class DID come in handy in the real world! I used a protractor I printed from the internet.
Then I added another unit, checking my photo for reference.

I filled in the pieces with green marker to really make the dimensional quality of the design stand out:
Then I scanned my drawing and drew parallel lines on it to break it up into pieces to look for a pattern on how to assemble fabric to accomplish the design.
At first I thought I would need to use a combination of parallelograms and equilateral triangles, but then I saw that the image is really just composed of a bunch of equilateral triangles.

So I composed a simple block in EQ6, tiled it and filled in the color, using a light, medium and dark. Here is the image with the visible lines - you can see the triangles and how easy this would be to put together.
I suppose I could sew all those Y-seams together if I used solid chevron pieces. It wouldn't be any different, technically speaking, than stitching hexagons together. Though I've never done that before either. And I probably won't attempt it any time soon. If I really stuck to lights, mediums and darks, I think this could look pretty cool with fabric. I'm calling this the "Dimensional Chevron" or maybe "Stacked Cubes" or something unless anyone knows any other name for it.

Here is a colored version with a border that allows for termination of all the pieces in their entirety - though I really don't like that top middle and bottom middle part - not sure what to do in that space. Any ideas?

2 comments:

  1. Hi Leah, thanks for your posting!
    I always thought that patchwork is a geometrical art, but this...
    Congratulations for your efforts to make sense of this pattern.
    Are you going to make a real patchwork quilt with this?
    Great week and thanks again!

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  2. I'm pretty sure you're a genius…hope all is well with you. We are freezing here in the Midwest and dreaming of Spring!

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