I am going to attempt to wrap a Maltese cross (as described by BD Ehler in his tutorial) on the butt or fore grip area of a surf rod (so it's fairly large diameter). I understand the basic layout and wrapping sequence. What i do not know is how big to make the diamond wrap over the middle "cross" layout thread, and then how big to make the "box" layout thread around the diamond wrap. It seems these ratios will be important to make it come out correctly. Any suggestions?
I also see this center diamond wrap is part of several other patterns, so general comments about this technique would also be helpful. Jim

What you need to do is eyeball the wrap as you are making it. There is no set formula for the wrap. It is all a matter of perspective. You can make it as large or as small as you wish. Just try to make the wrap work well with the diameter of the blank. Experiment!!
Trial and error is the best learning tool there is!!

Trial and error is good.
Trial and error with VisualWRAP is better! :-) You can quickly play with different sizes on the screen until you are happy with the proportions.

The middle cross fills in the centre of the Maltese Cross.
The outer points of the diamond wrap determine the height & width of the Maltese Cross. As one diamond (or box) gets wrapped in another diamond (or box) gets wrapped out. This forms the vertical & horizontal sides of the Maltese Cross. The more passes you make, the longer the sides become, however the overall width & height of the Maltese Cross is determined by the initial size of the diamond (or box).
The final diamond (or box) in the background colour is started once you are happy with the size of the sides of the Maltese Cross.

It's 1000 times easier to see this develop thread by thread on a screen using VisualWRAP than it is to try to describe it in words.

Cheers
Dave Boyle
VisualWRAP/VisualWEAVE
www.threadcentral.net