MR: Motley

[edh@ascc01.ascc.lucent.com (Alfredo el Bufon)]

Poster: edh@ascc01.ascc.lucent.com (Alfredo el Bufon)

When I told my lady wife of the many gentles who admired my
motley tunic at the recent Crown Tourney, she chided me for
not telling them how very easy it was for her to make.  I
will now reveal the process she used:

First, she bade me cut out a cardboard lozenge of the desired
size, and a second one with similar angles but larger on every
side by about a quarter of an inch.  This larger lozenge was
used as a pattern for cutting out lozenge-shaped scraps of
pre-shrunk cloth, that smaller one was for cutting out as
many lozenges out of stiff paper (such as may be found in
slick magazines or catalogs).  Each cloth lozenge was wrapped
around a paper one and taped in place.  Then it was a simple
matter for her to abut these stiffed lozenges and sew them
together.  Afterwards, the paper was torn out.

My lady learned of this procedure from quilting, but does
not know if it existed in the Period.

The motley ball I was kicking about the feast-hall was
similarly made, but there the angles of the lozenges were
important; the ball makes the figure of a rhombic
triacontahedron, and I must consult a book (the excellent
"Mathematical Models" by H.Martyn Cundy and A.P.Rollett)
to find that this calls for a lozenge (or "rhombus", as they
say) with an acute angle of 63 degrees and 26 minutes.
(The obtuse angle, of course, being 116 degrees 34 minutes.)
In practice the measurement need not be quite so exact.
We needed to make exactly thirty of these "rhombi", and,
to keep any two of the same color from touching, we needed
five different colors, each color represented six times.

-- Alfredo
 
Alfredo el Bufon
Elvegast, Windmaster's Hill, Atlantia
edh@ascc01.ascc.lucent.com
______________________________________

We're Capulets,
Capulets all the way,
>From our first cigarette
To our last dying day.

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