Drawing a perfect 45 degree diamond...and why...
Why would you want to or need to draw a perfect 45 degree diamond? If you have been playing around with skewing blocks into diamonds in Layer 2, you might actually want to make your creation into a quilt!!! EQ allows us to design and play around with blocks and fabrics, but the diamonds created in Layer 2 are unfortunately not a true 45 degrees. In a nutshell, when you skew your block into a diamond, you need to be able to set the rotation degrees at 22.5 (half of 45), but the rotation degrees in EQ4 are in whole numbers only, so you have to settle for 22 or 23. While your quilt on the Worktable looks beautiful and makeable, if you used the templates from your quilt and tried to sew them together you would probably end up with a mess and an ulcer and might be tempted to use my name in vain -- ha!
If you have designed a quilt using the skewing lesson highlighted/linked above all you really need to make your quilt is one perfect diamond and one square block. The square block is easy and templates or a foundation for paper piecing can be made easily. But for the diamond you need to draw your block in a perfect 45 degrees.
After many hours of trying to draft a perfect 45 degree diamond, I finally had to give over and e-mail Barb Vlack for help. I e-mailed her in the morning and I got an e-mail back and a project file by early afternoon saying, "Will this do?" YES!! The lady is amazing!
With Barb's permission here are the instructions drawing a perfect 45
degree diamond in EQ4.......
To determine the size of the block you will need to print for templates:
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To the Left is the 45 degree diamond Barb
Vlack created. To draw it yourself :
1. With a New Block on the EasyDraw Worktable, Click on the Block Menu and select Drawing Board Setup. Use these settings: Snap to Grid Points: Horiz-48 Vert-48.
Click on the Graph Paper tab. Set Number of Divisions at Horiz-2 /Vert-2. Under Options choose a color for your graph lines and for Style choose Graph Paper Lines. Click OK. (The graph paper lines will help you locate the center of the block) 2. Draw a diagonal line from the top left to the bottom right corner of the block. 3. Draw a straight line from the center point to the bottom of the block. 4. Click on the Arc tool and draw an arc beginning at the center point to the bottom left corner of the block. Click on Edit tool and click on the Half button. You should see a node at the center of your arc. Draw a straight line up from this node to intersect with the first long diagonal line. 5. Draw a diagonal line up from the arc node to the left side of the block. 6. Save your block in the sketchbook and then save the entire project. 7. Now delete all lines not necessary to the diamond patch. Click on the Select (arrow) tool and select and delete the arc lines. Save block and project again. When you click on the color tab your diamond block should look like the second block to the left. Now you can use this diamond to draw your block in. For instructions on drawing a block within a block click on this link. |
