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Monthly Archives: June 2011

How to cut a really large circle from cloth without a pattern

Have you ever found yourself in a position where you needed a really large circle (or several really large circles) of cloth and yet the pattern you had just been using to make these circles inexplicably disappears?  No?  Well, I have.  And should you ever find yourself in a situation requiring a large cloth circle and you have nary a pattern around with which to make it, you can be thankful that you’ve read this tutorial on how to cut a very large circle out of cloth without a preset pattern.

Materials:

  • enough cloth for your really large circle
  • tape measure
  • scissors
  • straight pins
  • iron/ironing board

Procedure:

  1. Determine how large you need your circle to be.  I needed a circle that was 20″ in diameter.  That means the circle has a radius of 10″.  (You know, d=2r.)
  2. Fold your cloth into quarters, making sure that each side is at least the length of the radius of your circle.  This way you only need to draw out a nice arc that is a quarter of the circle, instead of drawing four nice, perfectly matched arcs to make a circle.
  3. Iron down the creases.  You’ll want nice, sharp creases to get a cleaner, circle-ier circle.
  4. With the beginning of your tape measure firmly fixed on the corner of the single fold, mark out the radius along the cloth.  The more marks you make, the more accurate your circle will be.  Also, be sure that the beginning of your tape measure is in the correct corner!  You want all the loose edges away from the beginning of the tape measure.
  5. Connect all your marks in an arc.  Or don’t if you think you can eyeball it.
  6. Pin all layers of the cloth together near the edge, making sure that everything is smooth and even, and cut along your mark.  If you don’t pin, you may get a very strange looking circle indeed.
  7. Unfold your freshly crafted circle and iron out the creases, if so desired.

I had actually doubled up the cloth and made two 20″ diameter circles at the same time.  This is really thin cotton though.  I wouldn’t recommend doing that if you’re working with heftier cloth.  Your circles will come out slightly oblong and be different sizes.

Incidentally, right after I took all the pictures for the tutorial, I found the pattern I made for 20″ circles.  It was sitting smugly on my bookshelf the entire time.  So annoying.  Also, you could do this with basically anything out of which you need to make a large circle.  You might want to leave the ironing steps out for things like paper and stuff, though.

Why do I need such large cloth circles, you ask?  It’s a secret.  But my secretive projects are nearly finished.  So…soon…soon shall be the reveal…

I shall entice motivation with a vacation

A friend suggested a candy trail to lure motivation back.  I…just don’t think that will work very well.  For one thing, I don’t know what kind of candy motivation likes.  More importantly, Yaris and Choco would more than likely eat all the candy before motivation even realized it was there.  Candy trails work wonders at bringing unlost dogs back to you.  Instead, I’m going to talk about Iceland.  Why?  Because I like it.  I would like to go there.  I almost did, but then no one wanted to go with me and I didn’t want to pay for a hotel room by myself.  I was so close though.  I think next time, I might as well just go by myself anyway.

Anyway, through Jetsetter, I because aware of Elves and Trolls, a travel site that specializes in Iceland.  I really like Iceland.  I really want to go to Iceland.  I would like to spend a lot of time in Iceland.  Iceland is number two on my list of places I really want to go (Australia is number one, but right now I’m talking about Iceland).  And this package from Elves and Trolls sounds really interesting and I want to do it.  It’s similar to what was offered on Jetsetter that one time and no one wanted to go with me.  I don’t know about the “viking” level of difficulty though.  I’m not sure if I’m as fit as a viking.  How would I go about training for something like that?  Should I try and sail the seas like in the old Norse sagas and plunder and loot towns?  You know, I don’t think I really read about any females doing plundering and looting.  It was probably just the men with their horned helmets and and spears and braided beards and smoked fish and tankards of ale.  Wait, did the Norse drink ale?  I can’t remember.  Maybe just mead?  Mead tastes better than ale anyway.  But do you drink tankards of mead?  Maybe just goblets of mead.  Holding a goblet in your hand while sailing the icy seas doesn’t seem very viking-like to me though.  Maybe they just held goblets at the dinner table and they would switch to tankards when they were at sea.  Although, I would think most captains would have rules against drinking while sailing.  I’m sure that’s about as dangerous as drinking and driving.  Also, it probably would hinder your plundering and looting.

Er…what was I talking about?  Oh right, a trip to Iceland.  I would like to go to Iceland.  If not for that, then this sounds pretty interesting too.  Again with the viking level of difficulty though.  Or maybe this?  Or this.  Sugh, all of those requires people to have prior knowledge of the viking way of life though.  I don’t know how I would train for something like that here, which is not like Iceland at all.  And it would be hard to continuously hold my mustache/beard combo on a stick to my face so I could kind of have a braided beard.

Aside: my beard/mustache combo on a stick looks a lot like this but not quite so looped and it’s ginger and I don’t have a picture of it right now and I left it at someone’s house so I can’t take a picture of it.  I’ll put it up some other time.  In other news, if you want to make your own, these instructions are a good place to start.  Or these.

Btw, you should definitely check out the World Beard and Mustache Championship.

I am realizing that this doesn’t sound very enticing at all.  It’s kind of incoherent and rambly.  I’m not particularly tired…I don’t think.  I just…don’t have motivation.  And I guess I will continue to not have motivation.  Maybe I need to figure out a good viking workout in the meantime.