Layered Paper: Chimney Swallows Block

The Chimney Swallows block from page 128 of Beyer’s book:

Chimney Swallows - Beyer 128
Chimney Swallows – Beyer 128

The tool (blue & orange) and top cut (red) layers:

Chimney Swallows - LB layout
Chimney Swallows – LB layout

The long radial blue tool lines simplified selecting them when mirroring / duplicating the cut polygons around their symmetries. The orange tool circles aligned various midpoints / vertices / features during construction.

The inward curve along the outer edge started as a triangle with a node at about the middle of the curve. Deleting that node left the remaining two sides overlapped, but dragging one of them to match the curve worked OK. There’s probably a better way.

That curve defines the outer edges of the shapes along it, so I drew polygons from the corner intersections and dragged the outer edge to match the curve at high zoom.

The shape remains selected after dragging the side, which meant I could immediately apply a 1 mm inset to create the cut lines.

To my surprise, the swallow bodies are straight-sided polygons!

After taking advantage of all the symmetries, knock out the shapes defining each layer:

Chimney Swallows - LB paper cuts
Chimney Swallows – LB paper cuts

The swallows look like F-117 Nighthawks to me:

Layered Paper - Chimney Swallows - Beyer 128
Layered Paper – Chimney Swallows – Beyer 128

Maybe I have the colors wrong:

Layered Paper - Chimney Swallows - Beyer 128
Layered Paper – Chimney Swallows – Beyer 128

Fly away!