Drafting complex blocks
 

I am attempting to draft several complicated Jinny Beyer eight-pointed star blocks from a couple of her books. The books show the grids, but the grids are very small and there are few if any instructions for how to draft.

I have been to four quilting instructors who got stuck and had to give up (going to number five next Tuesday). Now I am working on this by myself and I seem to have figured out how to draw the blocks on graph paper (I won't go into enormous detail in case you guys don't need all this) but the problem is the points and lines aren't accurate enough to make reliable templates. I have spent a large number of hours on this so far, which is not a problem, but I mention just so it's clear that I'm not on a first draft or anything, more like draft five or so...

I have some decent drafting supplies, so not sure how to proceed to get the accuracy I need.

Is there anyone here who has worked on this type of drafting and could walk me through the process so I can get a bit better results?

Thank you so much...

Lainey

I haven't done this, so I can't help except to suggest you check out her free patterns on her website. Maybe something there will be helpful. Also, maybe you could email her directly and ask her for advice. Good luck.

Laurie

What part are you stuck on? If you draw guidelines - vertical, horizontal, and on the two 45 degree angles (which is easy to make accurate on graph paper), isn't that enough to give you accurate lines to draw against?

Yes, I checked out all the free patterns and there was nothing similar in terms of complexity. Then I also called JB Studio and the women there knew how to do the drafting but it wasn't really possible for me to understand what they were saying (I called twice) and I felt like they were somewhat rushed, not really set up for answering my questions. I'm in MA but I'm sure if I went to Virginia in person it would go much better.

Thank you, we both had the same ideas...

OK, I have all the lines you mention and you would think that would be enough, but somehow it's not working. This is a block with a hexagon in the very center, then a small 8 pt star radiating out of the hexagon and then two more stars radiating out of the central star, each one bigger than the one before. The place I'm getting suck is: I can't get the hexagon to have equal-length sides and because of this then each arm of the first central star has a different size width than all the other arms. Does that make any sense? I can try sending photos but not sure I know how?

Thank you for responding...

Lainey

Do you have access to a photocopy machine? Then you could keep enlarging the book pictures so you can see them clearly. Then you could recreate the image on a graph paper.

Do you have a set of compasses (for drawing circles). If so, you can draw a circle centered where your lines cross. Then, where the circle crosses the grid lines are the corners of your hexagon. If you don't have that, then you should be able to measure an equal distance from the center along each line, and use those marks as the corners of your hexagon.

So the drawing has a hexagon (6-sided) with an 8-point star radiating from it? That sounds a little strange.

The interior angles on a regular hexagon (meaning all 6 sides have the same length) are 120 degrees. You can use a quilter's ruler to draft them.

Yes I have a compass and have done both methods as you explain. It's not that I can't find the points, it's that I can't get the accuracy. I am off by a 32 or even a 16th of an inch no matter how many times I keep drafting these points.

Maybe my next question is, how much wiggle room do I have? If one arm of the central hexagon/triangle is plus 1/32 of an inch and another is minus 1/32, is this going to give me trouble? I just can't seem to get it any better than this. And in a couple of lines I am off by 1/16th in most of my attempts.

SORRY, of course I meant to write octagon! No, it's not six sides, it is eight.