POW #1: Possible Patches

Problem Statement:
A girl is making a patchwork quilt from old fabric she found in her attic. Her quilt is going to
be made up of a 3” x 5” rectangle. One piece of fabric is 17’’ wide and 22’’ long, the girl wants
to get as many patches as she can without sewing the straps together. How many patches
can she get?
What if the girl needs 9” x 10” patches from the piece of fabric. What about 5” x 12” or 10” x
12”
The girl found two more pieces of fabric one being 4” wide and 18” long and the other being
8” winde and 9’ long. How many 3” x 5” patches could she get?

Process:
For my first attempt I drew a diagram of the piece of fabric on a piece of graph paper. I had
already seen a few people try the problem out so I knew that the patches could all face the
same way. So I drew them in a random way I saw fit. I got 23 patches. I noticed there were
lots of random straps, so I counted those, and realized I was able to make one more patch. I
repeated the steps again but this time I tried to lay them out in a more orderly fashion. For
my second attempt I still got 23 patches. After my second attempt I started to notice a sort
of pattern. So I drew the diagram one more time but this time I tried to pay more attention
to the pattern.

First attempt Second attempt Final attempt

 To Find how many 9” x 10” patches the girl could get from the 17” x 22”
piece of fabric I basically started the same way I did the 3” x 5” problem. I
drew out the fabric piece and drew the patches. When I was drawing the
patches I noticed that the patch would only go into the width of the
fabric one time and only 2 with the length. Meaning there is a possible
way to fit more than 2 patches unless you sew scraps together.

To find how many 5” x 12” patches the girl could get from the 17” x 22”
piece of fabric I drew out the piece of fabric. But before I started to draw
the patches something stood out to me, 5 + 12 = 17. So I started to place
the patches in ways that matched that.

When starting this problem I noticed it was pretty similar to the 9” x 10”
one. Meaning that there wouldn't be enough room for more than 1 patch
width wise and not enough room for more that 2 patches length wise.

To find how many 3” x 5” patches the girl could get out of a 4” wide by 18”
long fabric piece I started by drawing out the fabric piece like the times
before. When drawing though I already knew that she would only be able
to 3 patches. Because the fabric is only 1 inch longer than the patch,
meaning you can only face the patches on the way. I also knew the girl
could only get 3 patches because the length is only 3 spare inches.
 To find how many 3” x 5” patches the girl could get out of a 8” x 9” piece of
fabric by trying to find some sort of pattern. I noticed that most of the
smaller pieces of fabrics had patterns of some sort I would pick out. When
looking I noticed that 3+5=8 and 3+3+3=9, meaning I knew that only 4
patches could fit into the piece of fabric.

Solution:
Keisha can get 24 3” x 5”, 2 9” x 10”, 6 5” x 12”, and 2 10” x 12” patches out of her 17” x 22” piece
of fabric. If she had 4” x 18” pieces of fabric she could get 3 3” x 5” patches and if she had a
8” x 9” piece of fabric she could get 4 patches

Evaluation:
At first I thought this POW would be easier than it turned out to be. During this POW I had
to really start and think about patterns and bring the area of the fabric piece into
consideration. However I do feel as if I didn't learn much for this POW. It was, however , a
pretty fun POW to work on when I had some free time.