After 50+ years, I finally needed to know ...

Who says you don't need all that math you learn in school!!

I finally needed to know how to calculate the distance of the corner-to-corner diagonal in a square! Luckily for me, I knew the question, and I'm lucky enough to live with a fellow who has all the answers when I come across these long-ago-learned & forgotten mathy things. Here's the short answer: Multiply the length of one side by 1.414 and you'll know the length of the diagonal. If you have a 3" square, the diagonal is 4.242" (say 4-1/4 for short). If you have a 5" square, the diagonal is 7.07 (or 7 plus a smidgen, for short).

Why do I need to know? Well, this morning, I started looking for quilt patterns that interested me, and I found two. Both are squares made into a bigger square and then turned so that they lay point to point on the diagonal. Tough to explain.

Here's a little picture that might help.
Look at the magazines in the upper part of the picture. The magazine on the right shows a 9-patch quilt put together on the diagonal, and it caught my eye right away. It looked interesting, but not too complex to become tiresome or too challenging for my meager talents. The magazine is Quilter's Newsletter Magazine, July/August 2006; and the quilt is Sarah's Nine Patch by Lorie Stubbs.

The left-most magazine shows some quilt designs by Kaffe Fassett in his book Museum Quilts: Designs Inspired by the Victoria & Albert Museum. The pink one, Square Clamshell Quilt, was the second quilt that caught my eye. It, too, is sewn on the diagonal, but it's 49 (7 x 7) squares in a block - a bunch more than 9 squares in a block. Click the picture to see more of the quilt details.

Not willing to fork over the change to purchase Fassett's book (part of my austerity program), I went to the library to see if I could find it. I didn't, but I DID find another Fassett book, Glorious Patchwork. I borrowed it so I could pick up some tricks about how he thinks and works his quilts. Color, pattern, and the actual quilting once the layers are together are the three important elements in the overall design of a quilt, I think. I don't know which is more important, but I do believe that the failure of one can undo the excellence of the other two elements. Fassett excels with color. I am wowed every time I open a Fassett book (I have a few of his knitting books).

In the picture, Glorious Patchwork is laying open to a Lattice Quilt which is also put together on the diagonal. I like it, too.

By the way, the bag holding the Quilt Masterpiece book is the last bag I made. I really like these bags. Big, sturdy, strong!

Before I start a project, I like to understand it. When I knit or crochet, I always read through the patterns first and see if I can comprehend where the designer wants to go. I want to find things that I think will trap me so I can begin thinking about them now and avoid costly and frustrating mistakes later.


To get me started this morning before I looked at patterns, I pulled a bunch of my stash out of the closet. My inspiration doesn't come in a vacuum, and my imagination needs all the help it can get. My basic rule, at this stage of my game, is to try to work off my stash, not increase it. So I need to have this stuff in front of me, hoping that my muse will be at work on it and will (sooner rather than later) shout "Eureka! This is it!"

That done, I dug through my collection of books and magazines and found the patterns in the previous picture. I have to be careful not to get myself in too deep. My last quilt was just the right challenge. It seemed to take forever (6 weeks or so), but I paced myself, and it was certainly not too much beyond my capabilities. I was able to finish it. I hope for the same good fortune with this one. I will be slow to go through this initial stage so that when I actually get started, I will be so eager to dive into it that my momentum will last until it's complete.

I think I'm ready for a diagonal quilt. I think I can pull this off. The question is, do I want to do a 9-patch (3 x 3) one (I can make the squares in strips, cut them, and then just alternate colors), or do I want to go for the more challenging 5 x 5 or (gasp) Fassett's 7 x 7 idea. Anything more than 3 x 3 means that I can't initially begin my squares with strips.

With anything beyond a 3 x 3, each strip must be planned and sewn square by square. Here's the way the 7 x 7 shakes out:

(I numbered my squares starting with #1 in the middle. Each number represents a fabric.)
07 08 09 06 09 08 07
08 05 10 04 11 05 08
09 10 03 02 03 11 09
06 04 02 01 02 04 06
09 11 03 02 03 10 09
08 05 11 04 10 05 08
07 08 09 06 09 08 07

Either way you look at it, strips 1 and 7 are alike, 2 and 6 are alike, 3 and 5 would be alike if I used only 10 fabrics and renumbered all 11's to 10, and the center strip is unique.


In order to understand the process, I sketched the pattern out on some graph paper. This particular page is where I came across the need to know the length of the diagonal. Hmmmm, I said. If my squares are 3" wide (finished) and therefore a block is 21" wide, how many blocks do I need to make a quilt of the width I choose. Woops! I was getting a strong feeling that my logic was off, so I took one of my quilting template squares and measured the length of a side and then the diagonal. Not the same. So the answer to that question, once and for all (Thank you, Lauren), is - multiply a side by 1.414 and then you'll know. (This is just your basic right-triangle math, but that was a long, long time ago!) For a less friendly explanation (well, less personable, at the very least), see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypotenuse
or if you want it with a cute joke, see:
http://www.mathnstuff.com/math/spoken/here/1words/h/h12.htm

I can play with that answer and combine it with the answer to "How big do I want this quilt to be?" and be ready to hear the Eureka! my muse shouts in my ear about how to use the fabric that I have.

Now, how big do I want this quilt to be? Here's a great site with that answer:
http://www.amishcountrylanes.com/Pages/QuiltSize.shtml

Oh, I love the Internet, and I love these people who are so very willing freely provide all this wonderful information that I would never find otherwise. Thank you, Amish Country Quilts!

I hope to actually begin cutting by this time next week.