Monday 19 November 2007

Star within a star within star within a star........

I have been thinking about this design for simply ages. I may or may not have feathers on the outermost star. I'm having a problem with the mechanics of the design. In theory this shaped star should fit within an octagon of any size, but as you can see the perfect octagon degenerates as it gets smaller. I've tried designing it from the smallest out and there is still distortion. The basic star itself is probably my favourite block, I love the secondary star of the white triangles.
The design problem happens in exactly the same way whether drawn out full sized on paper or drawn in Quilt Pro. I've been told the problems with the computer is there is a rounding up or down and the drawing on a drawing board is a similar effect.

3 comments:

  1. Where does the distortion occur, Sally? Are you saying that it won't be possible to sew it together? While I've had Quilt Pro for a long time much of it's still a mystery to me and I've always assumed that if Quilt Pro turned out the pieces it would all go together perfectly. If I'm wrong I think one of my ideas has just been scuppered.

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  2. Hi Anne, it's fairly easy to put together with partial seams.
    If you look at the 2nd star in it's still reasonably OK, but if you look at the 3rd star in you'll see the white right angled triangles are not now all the same size and on the innermost star, 4 of those triangles have disappeared altogether.
    It involves fairly complex drafting (thank heavens I did tech drawing at school)whether you start drawing it from one of the kite shapes on the outside or from the innermost hexagon and work out. And that still applies whether it's drawn with Quilt Pro or manually.
    It was amazing how much distortion I found on my rulers when drafting this (and I was using drafting rulers not quilt ones).
    Sally

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  3. I know that Marsha McCloskey designs very complex feathered stars but she uses Adobe Illustrator. Have you considered a different program?

    Jenny

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