Water Tower

I woke up at 12:30 AM today to finish up a water tower that my team and I built for my structural design class. We spent a good amount of time putting this together. I ended up taking it home today and reinforced the joints with wood glue. While I took the time to do this I realized how great engineers are. Throughout this whole project we were given some basic requirements, a limited supply of materials to choose from, and our minds to help design this water tower. I took a good look at our tower and thought it was really simple, unique, and sexy.

I'm going to rant for a little bit because I've been very frustrated over the past weekend. UCSD is one of the only schools in this country that is accredited for structural engineering. It certainly feels good to be in one of the top schools for your major. Engineering itself is very challenging. Majoring in engineering makes me appear really smart, but I'm not because I'm not a master at what I do. I feel as though I'm not allowing myself to learn. One thing I find important in the college experience is being in an environment where there is room for the individual to grow in every aspect possible. When one is allowed to grow there is this path that opens up. You start to have an idea of what you'd like to do after you get your degree. I would like to be at this level eventually. Enough for now.




Until next time...


kudos,
Jeff

Seductive Fabric Curtains

This is a follow up on my drape posting. If you would like to know how to create a drape please go to the previous posting. The purpose of this is to create a fashionable curtain using a sewing machine and fabric. I wanted to keep natural sunlight shining through my room so I chose thinner/transparent sheets of fabric.

What you'll need:

Fabric (I chose a solid black and a black/white leafy design. 1$ per yard at Walmart)
Sewing Machine (to sew the two fabrics together. Not necessary for single fabrics)


Before you begin buying fabric, I suggest you calculate the length from the ceiling to where you want the curtain to fall. In addition measure the region you will be covering. In my example, I chose the curtain to fall 69 inches from the ceiling and the region I will be covering is 211 inches. With this information, I can estimate how many panels I can cut because buying fabric comes with a fixed width. dividing 211 inches by that fixed length will give you how many panels you should make and multiplying those panels by how far you want the curtain to fall should give you the total number of inches you should buy. Convert that into yards and you will have to buy that amount of fabric. Keep in mind that this is an estimation so you might want an extra yard or two so you don't mess up in calculations. After I sewed my fabric together I simply hung them up on clips.

This is what it looks like

At certain angles depending on the light, you are able to see the design or straight through the curtain. I was surprised to notice this effect and was very happy with the results.

This is a picture with the curtains tied into knots

thanks for reading!

kudos,
jeff