Felting and Fiber Studio

Back to the math, Continuing the Dino purse

This will be just a wee tiny post compared to my regular verbose discussions. I have been a bit run off my feet with fun layouts and drafts for various proposals for the upcoming 75^th anniversary of the Ottawa Valley Weavers’ and Spinners’ Guild. I am also involved with the monthly summer library days and the guild got a gift of 10 sheep and 2 alpaca fleeces, my car is still a bit aromatic. Since I am sure more changes on layouts are awaiting in my email, I better tell you about the continuation of the Dino bag quickly and then get back to work.

When we last chatted about the Stegosaurus, I had just been dealt a crushing blow by numbers, evil uncaring numbers who thwart my want of a phone-carrying device!!!

From my misinterpretation of Ann’s suggestion, I had wound up with a much bigger carrying device than originally intended.  What do you mean you did not mean 50% added to each side?

1) scaling up, a bit over-enthusiastically

A quick review:

I had created the shape I wanted and then added gussets for the top and bottom. (This is how you can make a sewing pattern. But unlike sewing patterns felt patterns need a lot more “seem allowance” for shrinkage.  Figuring how much was where I derailed.)

After a bit of Consoling from Ann (it was such a cute dinosaur and I had been so careful in the measuring and redrawing!) Ann reviewed the math (ick) half of the distance, then half that again and put the halved half on each side. Ok, I think I can’t screw that up twice (don’t tempt fate but really I think I got it this time. <mutter mutter stupid dyscalculia>)

Next, we considered how to add the gussets to the side section.

2) Adding the belly gusset to the body shape

Ann suggested lifting up the legs (to be added separately, which I had considered as an option as well) and then drawing in half the belly gusset.

3) talking about adding the back gusset

Again take off the plates and add half of the back gusset.

The plate can be made separately. Which will allow them to be heavily/ stiffly felted. If I then leave a fuzzy end, I can attach them to the body partway through felting.

4) side panel of Stegosaurus with legs and plates folded up, ready to be traced to make a new template.

Now to create the new pattern.

5) drawing half the width of the belly and back gussets onto the side pattern

I traced the stegosaurs then added the half belly and back gussets to the body shape. I marked where the legs and plate went for reference. I have now achieved Stego-Blob!!

Ok, let’s try again on expanding the pattern:

When I weave, I usually measure my warp length with a string with knots marking the loom waste and the halfway point in it. When I made tamari balls, I used a folded paper band with pins. I am going to avoid the ruler I used last time with those untrustworthy misleading numbers and resort to a reliable piece of paper I can fold in half and then half the half.

6) Drew a grid over the new shape and found a scrap paper to use as a measuring tool.

I did use the ruler to make the graphed lines but carefully ignored most of the numbers.

7) graph overlayed on the blobby shape made by adding the belly and back gussets to the body.

On each vertical line, I took my scrap paper and matched the distance from one side of the stego-blob to the other along the line. I folded that distance in half on the paper then folded it in half again. That distance was then added to the top and bottom of the line and a point was plotted.

As I got closer to the head and tail you can see (in picture #6) that the increase is greatly lessened. By the time I had all the vertical lines plotted,  Ann was looking a bit concerned by the curvature around the nose and tail.

I explained this was only step one in the expansion plan. Step two would be to plot the horizontal lines next. Then as step 3 would be to average the two plotted dots and figure out the new outline. Ann said she would just estimate and go from there.

Oh no, time to stop!! A tornado warning just went off on my phone. No wind outside but that may literally be the calm before the storm.  When we chat again, I will let you know how the horizontal lines go and then average the points to make the new MEGA-Stego-Blog!!  (only 6 pages in Word, It is a tiny blog today.)

Update: looks like there was a tornado in Barhaven, it’s a suburb in the southwest end of Ottawa and North of Ann, it’s located between us. There is another band of the storm system coming later this afternoon but most of it should be south of both Ann and me, just in case it is more aggressive than it looks on the weather map I better get this posted!!! yep, the tornado alert just went off again but there is sunshine coming in my office window, so I will keep working on this rather than hide in the basement, but I will keep an eye on what’s happening out the window, just in case the weather changes its mind. (There is lots of comfy soft wool to keep me safe in the basement, but just not the specific wool I need for projects I am working on!!)