Q65 - Quilts - P'nG

Good morning,

This morning we would like to present to you our completed quilt, P'nG. (And for you logophiles that's pronounced "Ping".) Included with P'nG is a small accent pillow.

P'nG is a small quilt that will find its new home in Wisconsin. The dimensions of P'nG are: Length – 47” (119.4 cms); Width – 36” (91.4 cms). Our composition is of five fabrics of subtle shades of pinks, grays, and blue. The construction design is adapted and tweaked from a pattern entitled Vintage Orchards from the Quilting page on About.com. Thank you to Janet Wickell for providing the online pattern.

P'nG is a commissioned piece. If you are interested in discussing a quilt and or wall hanging possibility please feel free to contact me.

The following are images close-ups and the backing, including the accent pillow. Please note that the actual shades of the colors may vary in the images as compared to the original. This difference, at times is caused by set lighting.

We will be showing some of our quilts at the Cypress Creek Quilters’ Guild Show, As Your Garden Grow. The Show will be held at the USF Botanical Gardens on November 6th, 2010.

Our next quilt in our OP Noël Series, OP Angel is currently in the construction stage. All things being equal the top should be completed this weekend. Stayed tuned for OP Angel’s unveiling in the next few days. The fourth quilt, OP Ornament is presently in the design phase. Additionally, our hope is to add two more quilts to our OP Noël Series for a total of six quilts. Six quilts are: Noël Diptych, OP Noël II, OP Angel, OP Ornament, OP TBD, and OP Noël I.

To see previously posted quilts, there is a visual grid presentation at the bottom of the Quilts SB page. Move your cursor over any mini-picture found there and click to see an enlargement. Move your cursor to the "Q#" link to see the quilt's details. If the quilt’s title is highlighted in yellow, it has found a home in a collection and is no longer available.

Please let me know if anything on the Blog site does not properly work, or do what it says it is supposed to do. I’m always striving to make sure an ease of use.

If you are interested, and would like some more information of the available quilts, regarding costs, shipping, and insurance, please get in touch with me at our Quilts SB Etsy shop.

Enjoy,

Jim

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Q64 - Christmas Quilts - OP Noel II

Afternoon,

Number two Quilt – OP Noël II – of our OP Noël Series is completed, and available for your Christmas present.

The design of OP Noël II is quite simple. It is based on the construction of a square of six rectangles and using four fabrics. That’s it. There are 50 constructed squares; 18 half squares; and 4 quarter squares - the corners. The Optical Illusion design is succeeded by putting and sewing two exact squares perpendicular to each other. The binding and the backing are two of the four fabrics. The four fabrics can be seen at My Quip dated September 6.

The dimensions of OP Noël II are: Length – 73 ½” (186.7 cms) and Width – 63 ½” (161.3 cms). OP Noël II can be considered a lap quilt, small coverlet and accent, or it may be used as a holiday wall-hanging.

The following are images of close ups and the backing. Please remember that actual shades of the colors may not appear as sharp and as crisp in the images.

To see previously posted quilts, there is a visual grid presentation at the bottom of the Quilts SB page. Move your cursor over any mini-picture found there and click to see an enlargement. Move your cursor to the "Q#" link to see the quilt's details. If the quilt’s title is highlighted in yellow, it has found a home in a collection and is no longer available.

Please let me know if anything on the Blog site does not properly work, or do what it says it is supposed to do. I’m always striving to make sure an ease of use.

If you are interested, and would like some more information of the available quilts, regarding costs, shipping, and insurance, please get in touch with me at our Quilts SB Etsy shop.

We will be showing some of our quilts at the Cypress Creek Quilters’ Guild Show, As Your Garden Grow. The Show will be held at the USF Botanical Gardens on November 6th, 2010.

Stay tuned for our new quilts – P’nG and OP Angel.

Enjoy,

Jim

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My Quip – What Am I Expecting of My Blogs?

Morning,

For the past couple of days the following question has been keeping me up at night… not that I really sleep much anyway; What am I expecting of my Blogs? And a succinct and definite answer or answers seems to evade the mushed-up gray matter between my ears.

At present I have four Blogs; two active and two in-active. Two deal with the subject of genealogy. One is our quilt catalog and the fourth is my past attempt at writing a fictional fantasy.

My most active Blog is A Genealogy Hunt. Would I be wrong if I did make mention that I am somewhat obsessed with the subject of genealogy? I have geared and steered A Genealogy Hunt as sort-of a journal of the search and research into the genealogy and ancestry of my family lines; Smith and Robertson and their associated branches. But is it as active a blog as I think it should be?

Should I not present more of my travails and thought-processes of the nature of my investigations and examinations? I certainly do not claim to be an expert genealogist, under whatever auspices one may want to define the classification. Should I not focus on the how I did that, versus look what I’ve found? Reasonable question… and it’s me who is asking the question. I am not responding to anyone or to any reader’s comment at present.

Now flip over to my second active Blog, this one. It is sort-of a presentation catalog of the quilts that we have made. I design and Andy quilts. Our goal is to cut up some fabric and then sew it back together again. We make a good team and we enjoy the cooperative working process. All-things-being-equal our results are not just your run-of-the-mill, in our opinion, quilts. But should I provide more detail? Should I blog about how two amateur quilt-artists really enjoy our efforts? Should I present our techniques?

And what about the other attempts, the other Blogs, Hero and Angel and Genealogy, The Anderson Garcia Saga? Should I spend more time in those arenas? This is just my thought progression. You can comment or not.

And then there is my cooking. I just love to cook. I love to create good and healthy food… to eat. And of course along with that goes the gardening-for-the-table. But the blogging food recipe arena is a saturated market. You certainly can tell that when you can find the same and/or similar recipes in type, on coincidental blogs after a Google, Bing, or Yahoo search. And why do I continue to buy cookbooks?

These are just my thoughts this morning. I have to get back to work now. I am working on the transcription of an Indenture that is 10 pages long that includes references to ggg-grandfather James Smith, his daughter, gg-grandaunt Sophia and her husband, gg-granduncle Benjamin Ventour. This Document is immediately followed by a two-page Indenture that is most definitely connected to the 10-pager.

I have to take some photos of our next quilt which was completed yesterday and is ready for presentation. This is the second quilt in our OP Noël Series – OP Noël II. (There is no OP Noël I, as yet.) The designs on the third, OP Angel have been completed. And the design and fabrics have been chosen for a brand new small quilt titled P’nG, pronounced Ping. P’nG’s colors are pink and grey.

Stay tuned and enjoy,

Jim

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My Quip – Quilts In Progress – OP Noël Series – Do Not Answer

Morning,

I learned something a wee bit different a couple of days ago. I’ve started being bombarded by unsolicited sales and crank calls on my cell phone. It drives me up a wall, since I almost never give out my cell phone number, and there is no identifying caller name. When I checked in to see how to block unwanted calls, I will be damned if I’m going to pay out more money to have some sort of additional service added by the provider. The best answer I found was that when an unsolicited sales or crank call rings, on my cell phone, I answer it, quickly hang up and then save the offending telephone number to my Contact list. I name it “Do Not Answer”. Therefore the next time the phone rings and it originates from that offending number, I will know to ignore it. Simple, but pretty slick… for some bit of mind peace.

I have been working on some new designs for our new OP Noël Series. Noël Diptych is the first.

Noël Diptych will be presented, along with three other of our quilts at the Cypress Creek Quilter’s Guild Bi-Annual Quilt Show, As Our Garden Grows, this coming November at the University of South Florida’s Botanical Gardens. The show is Saturday, November 6th, 2010 from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm. The USF Botanical Gardens is located at 12210 USF Pine Drive, Tampa, Florida.

The new OP Noël Series, all-things-being-equal, will be a combination of three thoughts. I like the idea of Op art, optical art, coupled with the geometric forms that have been present in some of our previous quilts. The third idea is the fabrics which are of a Marcus Fabrics offering called Colonial Christmas from the collection of Judie Rothermel. I was able to get the fabrics from Fabric.com.

Presently under construction is number two, which has the current label of OP Noël 2. The title has not been determined as yet. I’ve included an image of the four fabrics, all from the Colonial Christmas collection that will be incorporated into this new quilt. As a hint it will be an assembly of rectangles… and that is as far as I will reveal.

Enjoy your Labor Day,

Jim

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Q63 – Christmas Wall Hanging and Quilt – Noël Diptych

Afternoon,

As promised we have completed our first quilt of our OP Noël Series – Noël Diptych.

Not Noël Dipstick – Noël Diptych! The OP is my reference to OP Art and the Noël to Christmas. Hence, OP Noël Series.

Noël Diptych is a result of my workings on a first draft for a commission that may be headed to North Carolina. I liked what I had designed and thought that I could do the same with some Christmas fabric. The two fabrics: Peace Love Faith in cream designed for MMFab, Inc. and Rustic Christmas Twinkle in red were both acquired from Fabrics.com.

Thinking that it may be a nice idea to create a Christmas Wall Hanging instead of a quilt, I worked on a simple checkerboard idea with the two fabrics. And not satisfied with only one hanging I then decided to recreate a mirror image of the first. And Noël Diptych was generated.

Noël Diptych is a set of two panels. Each individual panel is 72” (182.9 cms) in length and 25 ¾” (65.4 cms) in width. Andy hand-stitched the binding of each panel and completed each with four loops at the top on the back to allow many different means of hanging. And if one would like to join the two panels together we have created three sets of ribbon-ties which all can be paired up and tied together from panel-to-panel. Together the two panels are 72” (182.9 cms) in length and 51 ½” (130.8 cms) wide.

The following are images of Noël Diptych.

And next, images of close ups and the backing.

To see previously posted quilts, there is a visual grid presentation at the bottom of the Quilts SB page. Move your cursor over any mini-picture found there and click to see an enlargement. Move your cursor to the "Q#" link to see the quilt's details. If the quilt’s title is highlighted in yellow, it has found a home in a collection and is no longer available.

Noël Diptych is being presented at the Cypress Creek Quilter’s Guild Bi-Annual Quilt Show, As Our Garden Grows, this coming November 6th at the University of South Florida’s Botanical Gardens. We will also be displaying a few others of our quilts in the show. The show is Saturday, November 6th, 2010 from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm. The USF Botanical Gardens is located at 12210 USF Pine Drive, Tampa, Florida.

If you are interested, and would like some more information of the available quilts, regarding costs, shipping, and insurance, please get in touch with me at our Quilts SB Etsy shop.

Please let me know if anything on the Blog site does not properly work, or do what it says it is supposed to do. I’m always striving to make sure an ease of use.

Enjoy,

Andy and Jim

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