Thursday, December 2, 2010

Quilting Math Revisited.

My friend Mary is (relatively) new to sewing and likes to have a lot of guidance from me about how much of this or that she needs. It tends to usually be a vague question. Such as in this situation, "How much batting do I need to buy?" (she's making potholders, about 9" cut. She has great hopes of sewing something like thirty of these babies before christmas (some before next saturday!). lol. :) I figured I aught to break it down using my mad algebra skills. Did I mention that I once wanted to be a math teacher? {ok that was fleeting, mostly I wanted to teach theology and math, but well, theology teachers don't need degrees, there was no chance that I'd be hired as anything but a math teacher so I dropped the Edu from my major!}

Enjoy!



Mathematically speaking:

X/9.5 =Y

X= number of inches wide the bolt of batting is
Y= how many potholders you can make out of a 9" cut off of that bolt of batting. (giving wiggle room for imprecise cutting)

N/Y = Z

N= how many potholders (one piece of batting per) you want to make
Z= number of 9.5" lengths you'll need.

Z(9.5) = how many inches you'll need to have the lady cut off the bolt of fabric. (multiply this by two if you're going to use two layers in there, which I'd recommend!)


:) hehe. Maths are good.

You got that?

3 comments:

  1. Math is so not my friend. Thank you for sharing your expertise :)

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  2. While I could have figured this out on my own, I wouldn't have done so well at writing it out to explain to anyone else!

    As a side note, when I did part of my student teaching (at the Kentucky School for the Deaf), I had to teach "high school" math...Algebra 1 and Algebra 2....which was quite an experience with having to teach in sign language!

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