Good morning veryone
I know there is someone out there who can help me.
Trigonometry/geometry was never my strong point back in high school (and that's been a while), and at the time I never thought I would have any use for it in real life. As a doctor I don't use it, but who'd have guessed that it would come in handy in my quilting forays!
I am currently working on a sampler quilt. 56 12" blocks, all different. I got most from quilter's cache
Right now, the block I'm struggling with is called kite's tail. For this I need four blocks set on point. That means I need four squares with a diagonal of 3.5" (including seam allowance) to make a 12" block. So what size do I need to cut my squares to make a square with a 3.5" diagonal? The instructions on the site say to cut a 4.5" block. I did that. Spent a good part of my class yesterday sewing these pieces together, only to end up with a block that would have done great as a placemat (and a large one at that!). Obviously 4.5" square is too large! So I fiddled around with Pythagoras for a while, but when it came to doing square root calcualtions I gave up. I then fiddled around with an omnigrid ruler and I came up with a measurement of 2.5" squares to give me a 3.5" diagonal. Is this correct? I really don't want to cut into the too large fabric squares until I'm sure; now they are too large so I can easily fix that but if I then cut them too small, it will be a problem!
IS there an easy way of calculating these things? Is there a handy website that will give you measurements like these?
Please help!
Thanks
Claudia