Do you know that feeling when you step into a hole and everything tilts. That happened to me, without the sprained ankle, when I asked DH a simple question.
I was working on the Open Wide pouches I talked about the other day. Anna from Noodlehead has makers line up the corner seams, sewing then cutting off a bit to box the corners. I prefer to cut out a box and then do the lining up.
I asked him how to find the number to cut out the box from the “lining up the seams and cutting off a bit” number.
DH said “Pythagorean theorem”.
Holy smokes!
That &*^%$ math! He showed me the theorem. We talked through it and I understood a bit more about how it worked. Am I an expert? No. No, I am not.
I am really annoyed, though. If I had been shown how to make a pouch, then given this problem I would have understood the concept. Instead math teachers throughout my education wrote lines of numbers and letters on a chalkboard that all looked like gobbledy gook to me. Now I get it. Years too late to do more than squeak by in every math class I ever took after 3rd grade. Sigh.
OK, so here it is. Remember, I am not an expert, so your mileage my vary.
The key number is the number Anna said to cut off after lining up the points. It was 4.5 inches.
The triangle has to be a right triangle, which means that one corner is 90 degrees. Your formula works like this:
a² + b² = c²
a=b
a² + a² = c²
2a² = c²
c=4.5 inches
In numbers this formula looks like:
4.5² =2a²
some math using the calculator
20.25 =2a²
10 1/8 =2a²
3.28=a
I looked at the number given in the small and medium sized Open Wide pouches and did the match. I came up with 4 (medium) and 3.5 (small). 3.28 isn’t a great number for quiltmaking or bagmaking, so I rounded. I found the Open Wides came out a bit of a weird shape. Still useful, but a little odd. I’ll have to play with the formula bit and I think rounding down might be the way to go.
