If anyone is interested in playing along with me and making copa cabana triangles (shown here in Cosmic Burst and Oakshott shot cottons, I should give you a heads up that first of all you will need some freezer paper and you will need to know how to draw an equilateral triangle. You will need to draw and cut out three equilateral triangles, one with 5" sides, one with 10" sides and one with 15" sides. Instructions on how to draw equilateral triangles follow below.
Draw a baseline as long as one of the sides. Here, it is 5" long.
Draw a long line up the middle at 90 degrees (i.e. square) to the first line.
Draw a long line up the middle at 90 degrees (i.e. square) to the first line.
Take your ruler and put the zero mark on the left end of the baseline. Swing the ruler over and line up the 5" mark with the vertical line. Draw this side of the triangle.
Draw a line from that point to the other end of the baseline and voila, you have an equilateral triangle. Incidentally these diagrams were created on Touchdraw, a £6 iPad app (apparently it will soon also be available for macs) which I am head over heels in love with because it is making me look so fancy and professional. Expect many diagrams on this blog from now on.
Instructions on making the copa cabana triangles will follow in a day or two once you have had a chance to get hold of some freezer paper and make some triangles. You can make your three triangle templates from template plastic or ordinary paper but I like freezer paper the best since you can iron it onto the fabric, cut and then peel away. Once you have made your three triangles, take your ruler and draw pencil lines on the non-sticky side of the freezer paper 1/4" from the edge of each side of the triangle. I will explain why in the next tutorial.
I am guessing those rather fetching drawing were done via touchdraw! I have contacted them, very helpful and said they had quite a bit of quilting interest- think it had confused them!
ReplyDeletewow fancy drawings! I might need to try that myself :)
ReplyDeleteAh ha - practising?
ReplyDeleteLove the look of this block
Maybe you missed a career as a geometry teacher!
ReplyDeleteoh oh! How did you do those drawings?! What blog post did I miss? Still haven't gotten the PSE (I learned that from you teehee) out of the box.
ReplyDeleteWhat a pro!
ReplyDeleteI have downloaded the app, and hope to try it tonight. I will play along, I like those triangles.
ReplyDeleteLook at you getting all fancy with your app! Looks great! And since I have some left over Kaffe Fassett shot cotton from another project, I just might have to jump on board!
ReplyDeleteWe got an iPad. I can get the app!! Woohoo! Unfortunately, your brain is not available as an app. I checked. No Brain of Goldworthy app. So even if I buy Touchdraw I'm not exactly sure what I'd do with it.
ReplyDeleteIncidentally, I see you only need one more follower to hit 2000!!!! Jeez Nigel.
Love the diagrams!!!
ReplyDeletei read the first paragraph of this post and thought 'well that's me out then, I don't even know what an equilateral triangle is'.
ReplyDeleteI bought the app but Im damned if I can work out how to use it despite reading the instructions!!
ReplyDelete