Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

very nice. the felt looks good.

As a refinement, if you have access to a quilter, you may be able to borrow his/her rotary cutter, cutting mat, and strip templates to make the squares. It will be much (much!) faster and more accurate, if the tools are available. (If you decide to buy the tools, it becomes a SplurgeSplurge chess variant set.)

Very nice set, and very practical.

It looks very good. I do have one suggestion for improvement. Although single tiles are tops in versatility, they do take more time to set up. My suggestion is to sew single tiles onto larger surfaces to make tiles of various dimensions, particularly 1x2, 2x2, 2x4, and 4x4. I have recently seen television commercials for small sewing machines, such as Sewsmart and the Handy Stich, which are supposed to make some sewing jobs easier. And they're cheap too. I've found the Handy Stich selling as low as $9.99. By matching thread color with tile color, you would still have solid color squares.

<p>Thanks to everyone, including David Howe, for the positive feedback so far. I was afraid this page would go over like the lead in a weighted chess piece. Let me reiterate that the whole idea of using felt was that of my wife Marty Hale-Evans, then address a few of the comments below, chronologically.</p> <p><b>Peter:</b> (1) I think you're right about the variety of felt colours available. My local craft store had only a limited selection, but there were at least a few kinds of green, a couple of reds, and so on. I tried to pick colours that would harmonise. (2) Using squares instead of hexes is a great idea, thanks! I had already read <a href='http://www.chessvariants.com/crafts.dir/ceramic_tiles/construction-set.html'> Tony Quintanilla's page</a>, wherein he makes a Glinksy Hex Chess board out of square ceramic tiles, but I had forgotten. Perhaps I will submit a second page with more board photos. Glinksy is one CV I hope to play soon. (3) As for your tactical comment: DOH! I am not a strong Chess player. One reason I made a CV construction set is so I can become a better strategist and tactician without having to memorise volumes of orthodox Chess openings.</p> <p><b>John:</b> Great suggestion, thanks. I priced some quilting tools online, and you're right, they can be slightly expensive. However, a request on my gaming group's mailing list revealed that one of our players has close ties with a local quilting shop, so I'm pursuing that lead.</p> <p><b>Fergus:</b> Thanks for your suggestion. We already have a sewing machine, so no problem there. I may eventually sew together groups of squares as you suggest, but it seems to me that that may multiply my effort and the amount of felt I need while reducing versatility. For example, Dragonchess calls for a white-and-blue board to represent the sky. If all of my white squares are sewn together with black or brown ones, I'll have to cut out a new set of white squares just for Dragonchess. Setting up really large boards may become tiresome eventually if I retain individual squares, but right now it's not much trouble. For example, the other day we wanted to play Ultima and had misplaced our usual 8x8 board (a Martian Chess board from Looney Labs, with canals). With two people placing light squares, and omitting the dark squares altogether as described above, setup only took a minute or two. Perhaps if I can locate some quilting tools, as John suggests, it will be faster and easier to cut squares, and I'll give your idea a try.</p>

<p>BTW, another reason for not sewing the squares into larger groups is that it would make 'weird' non-orthogonal configurations such as Glinski's impossible with those squares.</p>

You mentioned that you need to take care on which side of the white squares you face upwards because some of them still show pink lines from your pencil. I suggest you go back to the fabric store and get a fabric marking *pen.* The one I've used for years is a felt-tip marker that makes vivid purple lines; very easy to follow. However, if you dampen the fabric, the line rapidly fades out of existence. Even if you don't actually sponge or mist water onto the fabric, after a couple weeks, natural humidity will cause the line to fade away.

Thanks for the nice comment and the advice, Dave. It's good to know about the pen, and if I were still cutting the squares out with ruler and scissors, I would certainly use it. However, I've been using quilting gear (rotary cutter, mat, and straightedge). After some trial and error, I've found that (as other people suggested below) it's faster than cutting squares out the old way, they make straighter squares, and I don't need to mark the felt at all.

What are the green squares for?