How often have you folded a strip of paper in half, in half again and so on until you can’t fold it any more? Did you know you were half way to the magical world of Dragon Curves? Unfold the paper, make all the folds right angles, and you get a lovely twisting shape. With the piece of paper you can only make about 6 folds but, mathematically, it is quite an easy problem to work out the effects of subsequent folds. You may not think they are really ‘curves’ because all the corners are square. Make enough ‘folds’ and your design gets more and more packed together. It is known as a ‘space-filling curve’.

Even more magically, several dragons fit together to cover more space. They can be placed head-head, tail-tail or head-tail. Different sizes of dragons can be put together to cover any surface.

Believe it or not, the two hangings shown in the photographs are from the same design.

The design is worked onto a square background grid. You can either make your own, from the instructions in the booklet, or you may be able to find a suitable mesh fabric. The dragons are applied with surface crochet. Despite looking very complicated, once the first dragon is in place the rest are very quick and easy to work.

The red/grey design used a velvet-type knitting yarn in four colours. The multi-coloured mohair design used four main colours with different shades added to them for various sizes of dragon.

Read the story of this afghan on Ravelry or on Woolly Thoughts web site.

We also have Scaled Down - a booklet of smaller items using dragon curves - and Dragonometry - for those who want to understand the mathematics behind dragon curves.

The three booklets are combined in Here Be Dragons

Ben Ashforth (Benguin) was also involved in designing this.