Tag: fibonacci

Fibonacci 8 Tartan

In 2015, I created the Fibonacci7 Tartan.

I’ve revisited the concept, and today I give you Fibonacci8. Update 10/12/2021: it has now been officially registered.

The Fibonacci 8 colors as a Golden Spiral

By making the sett of the tartan design asymmetrical, I was able to extend to the 8th number in the sequence, and added a 5th color to the pattern, a natural ecru white.

The Fibonacci 8 tartan sett. You can see the proportions of the spiral in the square regions running diagonally from top left to bottom right.

I tried each of the original four colors for the 8th number, and I thought red and green had the some appeal, yellow was interesting, and blue wouldn’t work because it was the 7th number, and I didn’t want to re-order the first 7 colors. But in the end I decided that adding a new color would give the tartan better balance. Each number in the sequence is roughly as big as the previous numbers in the series combined in the early part of the sequence, so after the first 5 numbers, repeating colors really changes the balance, with the color of the last number dominating. So going with a new, and neutral, color for the 8th value in the series works well.

I like starting with yellow as the starting number, symbolizing the start of the golden spiral, and then not using it again, in order to keep it special and to give the eye a visual anchor to where the pattern begins.

I’m very happy with the resulting design.

Fibonacci Tartan and Kilt

Some time ago, Youtube channel Numberphile posted a video on a tartan based on the fibonacci sequence.

Inspired by this, I’ve created a fibonacci-based tartan of my own:

Fib7-7

Isn’t it beautiful?

My design is based on the first seven numbers in the Fibonacci sequence: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13. It uses one thread of yellow, then one thread of red, two threads of dark green, three threads of navy blue, five threads of red, eight threads of dark green, and thirteen threads of navy blue. To scale up the size of the sett, I will be multiplying these numbers by seven. I call the tartan, Fibonacci-7.

I just started a crowdfunding campaign to register the tartan with the Scottish Registrar of Tartans, and have a kilt made with it. It will cost an estimated $2250 to have it produced. Once registered, the tartan will become available to textile manufacturers to produce cloth and garments in this tartan.

If you are interested in math or just love a beautiful tartan, please consider donating to the cause, and spread the word. If every visitor to this site donated just $1, we’d have funding within less than one month. So if you’re a regular reader of this site and have found my articles on GameMaker useful, please show your appreciation by donating what you can. Thank you.