Triangle Twist Fold A Thickness Test

This is the newer pattern I was going on about in the last twist fold article.

Once again I have halved the space between the twisty bits. I really like the way this one looks collapsed. This one looked so interesting I got out all my leftover fleece from my first baby blanket and cut it to match the diagram above. I was hoping that I could get it to collapse into a mattress like form.

  The way the front and back patterns line up has me wanting to try raising the larger central hex s on the back since they move into contact during the twist fold collapse. The smaller hex s disappear into the folds. 





For the thickness fold quilt test I obtained a section of pre-quilted material and marked it using the same sized quilting template as the last (still unfinished) test quilt

  


         
The template at left is the quilting pattern I'm thinking of using, and the triangle grid I used to lay out with. 

Below on the right are the folds only. The long ones are all valley folds, the short ones are all mountains.

I am curious to try thicker and thinner areas to see if I can get a more uniform thickness in the collapsed folding. For now I really just want to finish a test quilt with the looser quilting, a fleece front, cotton batting, and a flannel back. Just seeing how it folds is enough for a first test. The scale of the thickness test piece is the one I have in mind.The size of the test fold sample is about the size of the baby blanket I'm shooting for. 

   This picture shows some of the fleece
pieces laying on the still collapsed thickness test piece, (I hate to unfold it) but there are a bunch more. 

Breathing New Life Into an Aging Avacado

It looks like the beginning of the end for this elderly Avocado, but in fact this whipper-snapper just has a soiled diaper. Yes the stained sand that was untill lately a shower pan is sporting a distinctly over-ripe aroma, but the crossover is not warped or bulging and the ceiling below it is unstained. Before it recently softened and began releasing its tile it was draining well.  

A careful dis assembly with blunt chisels, followed by a scrub with bleach water and a shop-vac, had it ready for a makeover quicker than anyone expected.

The next day, with a fresh work space and a taped drain, the new pan was installed in short order.

   


It was a little distressing to mark up the freshly troweled smooth pan with pour patterns, but the new pan (made with mortar admix instead of water) was thoroughly saturated with the same admix. and smoothed carefully where necessary.    


After seeing a pan breakdown like this one, it was tempting to go back with concrete or some sort of precast pan. In fact with a good vinyl liner and a sound sub-floor this admix should  be quite enough.

        






This last round of repair and restoration isn't very dramatic,
to look at. It would be the before and after test ride that would make you appreciate this difference.
While waiting for the grout to temper, (it has rest for 15 min after mixing to prevent tiny bubbles) I pulled the toilet to replace the wax ring and caulk it down to improve it's stability. This proved more challenging than expected. The cast iron flange was raised above the tile about a quarter inch, and there was crumbling tan putty spread over most of the toilet's footprint. After replacing the bolts and removing and replacing the wax ring, we re-set the toilet. From the way it wobbled it was obviously balanced on the flange and leaning down to the floor. Once we fitted and caulked down a 1/4 in thick Hardie backer board (waterproof and very crush resistant) insole, we replaced the wax ring again and re-set the toilet. Ta-Da! We taped around the wobble free toilet carefully and caulked it to the floor. 

  When researching this color for it's age, I also found it refereed to as banana, which inspired more interesting design directions. The saved pieces of the one piece of base that had been damaged fit well and grouted in nicely.

The thin-set mortar and grout were also prepared with the mortar admix to enhance their waterproofing.



      

The Triangle Twist Fold Quilt Experiment Number One

Twist folding is really a fancy way to crumple. As you may have guessed, the two layers above have a lot in common. They have the same three axis network, the same number of blue triangles, and truncated white triangles. The topmost piece is however missing almost all it's green hexagons. Except for some slightly raised flaps the green has disappeared into the pleats created by the triangle twist fold in action. The Removal of this area (47.7) percent of the total has seriously drawed up (that's a technical term, shrunk) the mostly green free, and now highly modeled example.

This is the backside of the twist folded sample above. Fortunately the transparent tape I used to repair ruptured folds doesn't show. At this small size, I found copier paper really didn't want to be this shape even after scoring the lines with a used up ball point pen. I did the scoring on top of a poster board. A harder surface would probably have caused burnished instead of weakened lines. It took me more than an hour to herd this little, ragged sample into shape.

The test section to the right is about all I can do about sewing the top of this quilt right now, but I couldn't leave it alone. Another look at Ron Resch's "Paper and Stick" made me long once again for a more involved surface (one of his was all twisty bits and slits). My attempt at closing down the gap never worked well enough to be worth polishing up. The map below is still full of extraneous colored lines where I realized I was on the wrong track and instead of starting over I just changed colors.

None of these tiling twist fold tests were easy (the one that got sewn took the better part of two hours to fold) and tore quite a few times. The one to the left never settled more than two twisty bits at a time in two hours. It may work in a larger size but this one was too tough for me so far. 
I had much better luck with the one below. It splits the difference between the last two versions and folded well even though the net printed slightly denser. 

  

 I just penciled this one in, made a copy, and scored it up with a dead ball point pen. It worked so well it's going to be the basis of yet another twist fold test quilt and the subject of another article. Next!
                                   
                      

Triangle Twist Fold Tiling

Using the video

 as a guide I substituted The three 

axis worksheet from Cyclogon and tried a tiling

section. The twist fold was strange but I was 

hooked. I recently watched "The Origami Revolution" and ever since I've wondered if there wasn't a twist fold quilt possibility.

The twist fold lattice to left is several copies of the first test taped together (still on the Three axis worksheet). The red lines are folds, the green rhombus s are areas that are hidden in pleats, and the blue are the triangles that twist.

 Sewing is more of a project than folding, and I still hadn't seen the cell of the lattice work yet. Chubby Checkers would be proud, it does the twist! OK, now I'm twisting and involving a whole plane. Can I make the the twisty bits involve more of the area? The first version extended a mountain fold from each triangle point four intersections and made another triangle. This time I only went two.

 The background grid may seem a little cluttered but I already got it and I'm pushing forward after understanding not neatness. Again the green areas hide in the folds and the red lines are on the main folds, mostly to keep track of them.

  
Now we're talking. This is looking sew-able. It also looks like what Ron Resh was talking about in his excellent video which I recently failed to understand very well. He mentioned simplifying the polygons, and in this last test I can see what looks like squares (almost) regular hexagons and regular triangles. 

Thanks Ron. I'm gonna stick with the proportions from the grid (because it lays so flat), but I think I've got enough to sew a test quilt now. Juxtapose yer phalanges!

Firstest Things First

                                                                         We really didn't think too much                                                                             about the pictures while replacing

     the boards of the upper deck.     Not putting a knee through the slippery boards and ducking wasps kept us pretty busy. We only pulled a couple of boards at a time to keep the new holes as small as possible.There was just enough of a hole for the new board and a block to wedge against for alignment.

Once we began replacing boards on the 
living room deck it became apparent one
band board wouldn't hold screws and had to
go. 

So instead of a board or two at a time we had to disconnect that whole edge to move forward. When we blew the leaves off the 
screen porch roof under this deck, it was obvious we needed to put in a new flashing and slip a new fiberglass roof in on top of the rusty metal roof. Even though the bead board ceiling as yet showed no water damage, our new deck should long outlast the rusty old porch roof.   

The roof of the house had been replaced fairly recently. Once the ruined gutters and fascia had been removed the damage was easy to spot.



 Around the gutter break and at the corner the soffit needed a  serious make over. Even though 30 or so years old, most places were good to go with a few new long screws to tighten things up.                               

However a number of rafter tails had very little left to attach a fascia to till they were sister ed.                           

The lowest two decks were checked out, repaired, and have the multi-colored boards to prove it.

It's possible that there will be more rails and even possibly even a stair tread or two, but probably not before another french drain or two.