#classical construction

My first ever attempt at sashiko!  Natural linen thread on denim jeans (left leg), shippo tsunagi pattern.

I thought this pattern would be a good beginner choice, but I was ambitious. I didn't care strongly about making even stitches, I just wanted to try this out.  

I created the grid circle-by-circle (compass and straightedge), using a very cheap drawing compass with a pen taped to it. This turned out to be a TERRIBLE mistake: 

Fabric stretches as you drag a pen over it (Euclidean construction on not-very-Euclidean surfaces, a bad idea--who knew)

As you move farther from the origin, the grid becomes more and more distorted as the errors compound

Since the pants are intact, placing rulers over seams (bumpy!) will distort measurements.

I also didn't take into consideration that at the intersections, I'd have to choose how threads would overlap. So there are some messy intersections.

Straightedge and compass construction is a method of constructing geometric figures using only two tools: a straightedge, which allows the creation of a line through two points, and a compass, which allows drawing a circle given a center point and a point on the circle’s edge. Points can be created at the intersection(s) of two lines, two circles, or a line and a circle. Given this limited set of possible actions, we can create a surprisingly large set of shapes, angles, and lengths.

The construction of several basic shapes is shown below.

Equilateral Triangle (Regular Trigon)

Regular Hexagon

Square (Regular Tetragon)

Regular Pentagon

My second attempt at sashiko.  Natural linen thread on denim jeans (the same pants), shippo tsunagi pattern.  

Hey so remember how I said creating a grid by circle-by-circle on fabric was a terrible idea?  I decided to do it again anyway 🤦

On this leg, I didn't make the edges of my design straight; I wanted it to look like circles were almost randomly selected to be in the pattern or not.  I also added colourwork, because, again: #ambitiousbeginner