My Quip – Quilts In Progress – Fuyudori and Moon Racer

Afternoon,

I was asked how do we, that is Andy and I, work on a quilt without getting in each other’s way. And believe it or not there is a very simple response. We seem to work at two different ends of the spectrum. Both ends appear to complement each other.

For an example our next quilt, the fifth one of the PJs & Packages Series began from two different directions. One direction stems from the choice of fabrics. You can see samples of those fabrics for our PJs & Packages Series in My Quip, yesterday.

Four ideas, that is, four quilts were and are being worked on. Two are done and two are at the stage of being “sandwiched”. The fifth began with an idea from Kumiko Sudo’s book East Quilts West which was published in 1993.

In my review of Kumiko Sudo’s book there is a block pattern named Fuyudori – Migratory Birds of which I thought would be a good possibility for the foundation block of a quilt. I reconstructed the block and tweaked and calibrated the expected dimensions. I created the new quilt specifications using my reconstructed Fuyudori block and the PJs & Packages fabric. I entered the reconstructed block pattern into Electric Quilt; EQ7. The patterns were completed. I then printed out the patterns and templates for Andy to begin the construction.

In the meantime, after listening to the Rudolf The Reindeer, The Island of Misfit Toys video, (see My Quip Posting), I chanced upon the phrase “King Moon Racer”. Voila, the title of the next quilt of the PJs & Packages Series, Moon Racer.

Having cut out all the pieces, Andy began the construction part of the blocks. Each block should be 16-inch square; 40.64 centimeters square.

And then the issue. It appears that one part is off by 1/8th of an inch… 0.3175 centimeters. That’s one hell of a fraction to be off; in most cases it could be ignored. But understand that’s eight one-eighth of an inch off, or one whole inch for each block. That is one hell of an error.

Andy was very calm about it. I was blasting the software. I then examined Kumiko Sudo’s Fuyudori’s pattern against our own. Whereas I had tried to match points to points, her pattern was not at all set at point-to-point. I felt like taking some sort of flight pattern with some noisy migratory birds.

And then Andy fixed the block… Each of the offending pieces has been shaved, that is, cut by 1/8th of an inch. The fix works. Construction on Moon Racer continues.

Stay tuned. I will Posting the quilts of our PJs & Packages Series shortly.

Enjoy.