Touchdraw - drawing an EPP dresden plate

Touchdraw is a vector graphics app for iPad which I use to design quilts, blog headers, buttons and to draw up templates and quilt assembly diagrams.  I have done previous Touchdraw tutorials which you can find if you put Touchdraw into the search box on the right side bar of my blog.  

Today's Touchdraw tutorial is not about making pretty pictures but about starting with some geometry and ending up with some EPP templates.  Mandy has been making beautiful little mini EPP dresden plates.  Justine asked for some little mini EPP templates for something she was working on.  She wanted to make a mini EPP 12 leaf dresden and Jon from Touchdraw for iPad has come to the rescue to take us through the process step by step.  I use the same technique to draw up all my templates - i.e. draw the outline of the geometric shapes first and then convert those into actual shapes which are then printable as templates.  

1.   Draw a circle.

 2.   Draw one vertical radius.  

3.   Draw three more radiuses or radii if you like a fancy latin plural.  

4.   Select all 4 of the lines you just drew and copy them.  Use the "Group" command to group all of the lines together. Copy the grouped object to the clipboard (but do not paste yet).  Use the function key feature and drag the rotation handle down 15 degrees. With the function key feature enabled, it will rotate the shape in increments of 15 degrees, which is exactly what we want since your target wedge shape has 12 pies in it, each 30 degrees.

 5.   Use the "Ungroup" command to ungroup the 4 lines.  Use the "Paste in Place" command to paste in another group of lines:

6.   Rotate this group 45 degrees.  Ungroup this group of 4 lines.

7.   Use the "Paste in Place" command to paste in another group of lines.  Rotate this group -15 (otherwise known as 345) degrees.  Ungroup this group of 4 lines. You should now have a perfect pie that looks like this.

8.   Now, since TouchDraw has a "snap to line" command which will allow you to snap to the ends or midpoint of a line, you should be able to draw lines to make perfect sized wedges since they will snap to lines we drew in earlier steps. Note: To make sure that the "Snap to Grid" doesn't interfere, you should turn it off temporarily.

 9.   After a drawing a few more lines, we should end up with this.

10.   Select the circle and delete it to give us our final shape:

11.   Now I want to add the little points on top of the wedges.  With the "path" tool, draw a rough triangle above top/center wedge: (Note: It doesn't have to be perfect).

12.  Drag the lower left handle so that it "snaps" to one corner of the wedge.

13.   Drag the other handle to that it "snaps" to the other corner of the wedge.

 14.   Turn "Snap to Grid" back on.  Drag the top handle the position you want it.

15.   Go to the "Settings->Handles" menu and turn the "Center of Rotation" handle to "On".  Drag the "Center of Rotation" handle for that top wedge to the center of the circle.

16.   Copy the top wedge to the clipboard.  Use the "Paste in Place" command to paste the top wedge shape 11 more times. (Note: It should look slightly bold with all of the shapes drawn over each other).

17.   One by one, select one of the copies and use the function key feature to rotate them in increments of 30 degrees.

18.    You should then end up with something like this.

19.   Next add the dresden circle in the middle as a guide for that end of the templates.  

20.   To make templates from a shape like this, tap on the shape drawing icon (which is a pen nib in the left toolbar).  Tap on the corners of the shape you want to make, not worrying too much about being 100% accurate.  Make sure you tap on each corner and then back on the first corner to complete the shape.

21.   You can then zoom right in and move each corner of the shape exactly into place so that a perfect template is created.

22.   Next add a slightly larger circle for your central template.

23.   You can then copy the two template shapes and paste them into a new drawing and duplicate the dresden leaves as needed.  I draw a rectangle about 1" smaller than my printer paper and arrange the shapes within that rectangle which you can then print out and use for a template set.