Does this look familiar to anyone, and if not, does anyone know how it could be drafted?

This was on a leaflet advertising a quilt competition. I called the person organising the competition, who called the girl who designed the leaflet. She said she'd found the image on Microsoft images.

I'm completely fascinated by it. Would electric quilt be able to draft it? Or maybe I should try with pieces of paper, cut into shapes?

Try this link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penrose_tiling
A Penrose tiling is a nonperiodic tiling generated by an aperiodic set of prototiles named after Sir Roger Penrose. This link should take you to a picture. This might make it easier to either copy the picture and enlarge it or to draft it. Now that you know what it is called you could google it and maybe find out all the correct angles so that it would be easier to draft.

They all are diamond shaped. I wonder if you might have better luck with paper piecing

Looks fascinating , Keep us posted on your progress

kckwilter:
You're amazing! You don't know how many people I showed this picture to...I have never even heard of a Penrose Tiling! Have you seen one made into a quilt pattern before?

This quilt is all about math. lol

http://domesticat.net/2010/03/penrose-quilting

Now that I have looked at the Penrose tiles, I bet it could be done with English paper piecing. Batiks? Oh, no, another project!

(English paper piecing wouldn't challenge my math skills!)

if you google penrose tiles you'll find googobs of information. i used to have a program i found free online that generates them. i keep forgetting to go find it again.

i agree they'd make fascinating quilts.

thanks for the reminder.

The "big" diamonds are drawn with 72, 108, 72, and 108 degree angles and equal length sides.

The "skinny" diamonds are drawn with 36, 144, 36, 144 degree angles and equal length sides.

(Pretty sure those are correct - please change it, if wrong)

All the angles are multiples of 36.

Beautiful quilt!! But since I'm more than math "challenged", I think I'll just admire these from afar :lol: :lol:

This pattern is very similar to "tumbling Blocks".

Similar idea - the angles are changed -

Everything is based on the idea that a four sided figure will have four inside angles that equal/total 360 degrees.

You are a math wizard :D:D:D


What a beautiful design!!! I think it would be a fun EPP project :D:D:D

It is beautiful!!!

I got a headache just looking at it, LOL.

From what I've found, at one time there was a tutorial using EQ through Patchpieces. She's redesigning her website and the link is broken.

I was thinking the same thing. I love Tumbling Block but am not ready for angles yet - still working on straight lines... The difference is the use of the narrower diamonds around the "stars." It is a lovely pattern.

Cheers, K

I can't get over how clever and helpful people are on this board. Thanks, to everyone! I called Paper Pieces.com today and they can cut the pieces for EPP - can't wait! Now just to choose the fabrics....

OK, what is EPP?? :oops:

English Paper Piecing - like the grandmother's garden hexagons

Thanks!! (Duh :oops: :oops: :lol: :lol: )

I did too. It changed every second as to how it looked too. I think it might drive me insane (half way there now) to put that together.

wow, I would be interested in that pattern also, so you pick out your fabrics and send to them to cut out????

so what is the name of that pattern???

Hi - thought I'd chime in, since some people seem to have found my post (on domesticat.net) and have expressed interest.

I can confirm that yes, the pattern shown in the original photo is a Penrose tiling, and the angles someone wrote in a previous post look correct.

If you're thinking of tackling the pattern, I'd definitely encourage it, but there's definitely some caveat emptor here. There's a lot of math behind why the two Penrose patterns (yes, there are two, commonly called 'sun' and 'star') are the way they are, and one of the most important points about the design is that a true Penrose tiling doesn't repeat. Not fully, not ever; Roger Penrose's discovery of this pattern was the highlight of his professional career as a mathematician. (He's still alive, and a professor at Oxford.)

The quilt person in me says "the two pieces can fit together in quite a few different ways that are pretty" but the math geek in me says "but please don't call your quilt a Penrose tiling if it really isn't."

An example of a not-quite-Penrose is the baby quilt Penmanship, which I just finished up tonight. It uses the same two pieces, but it is NOT a Penrose tiling. It's a variant called a 'cartwheel.' The blog post is at http://domesticat.net/quilts/penmanship and the flickr photoset is at http://www.flickr.com/photos/domesticat/sets/72157624162169050 -- but this should give you an idea:

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4046/...4588260404.jpg
original photo on flickr

The blog post I made at http://domesticat.net/2010/03/penrose-quilting contains a few files that should help you out, and gives you a big enough rendering of a Penrose tiling that should allow you to get up to a king-sized quilt out of it.

If you're struggling to see the patterns in the Penrose, here's a screenshot of the planning process for the quilt Pentatonic (http://domesticat.net/quilts/pentatonic) I'll be starting in a few weeks. I'll post photos of my progress at http://www.flickr.com/photos/domesticat/sets/72157623606678245/

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4012/...d8d1441bd9.jpg
original photo on flickr

If you let your line of sight flow out from the center of the square, look outward just a little and you'll see what looks almost like a five-lobed flower. Look further out and you'll see a partial repeat of the center. A bit further still and you'll see each of those five pieces are actually partial repeats of the initial five-lobed flower. If you extended it further still, the pattern would continue to expand and fracture in a complex but comprehensible way. That is a Penrose tiling.

If you've got questions, feel free to contact me. There's a contact form over at domesticat.net, and I'm reachable at [email protected]. If you decide to dive into the world of tilings-based quilts, I'd love to talk to you.

...and now I'm off to pull 'Penmanship' out of the dryer...

Wow! simply complicatedly gorgeous! Another one for 'the list'...

This is AMAZING...

Wow, I wouldn't know where to start.

Cool - thank you for joining in.

A belated follow-up:

I'm able to create custom acrylic templates through ponoko.com, and I've made templates for Penrose tilings. I'm looking for a few brave and crazy quilters who might be interested in helping beta test the pieces. I can make the pieces available for purchase on ponoko, with zero kickback to me. I'm hoping to keep the cost under $20.

If you're feeling brave, and are interested in doing a quilt like this for yourself, hop over to http://domesticat.net/2011/06/seekin...crazy-quilters and get in touch. I'll make a separate post elsewhere on the board so other quilters will find this topic, too.