Saturday, April 23, 2011

My Quip - AB and Pigs In A Blanket

Afternoon,

Joyous Easter, Happy Passover, Happy Arbor Day, Wondrous Lover's Day and what ever other holiday you are celebrating this weekend. And tomorrow, April 24th, make sure you set some time aside to observe National Pigs in a Blanket Day.

This past week has been extremely hectic. The majority of our quilt work has been on hold as Andy decided that it was a wee bit important that he have triple by-pass surgery and the required operation. His surgery went very well and he is now on the road to a slow, but unqualified recovery.

Andy's only comment is "Damn... there is only six more inches to quilt on our Colored Glass quilt." Guess he'll have to teach me how to use that part of the machine. And he bloody well better get healed soon as we have nine more quilts in the chutes.

Both Coral Steps and Primary Twister have been shipped and received at HMQS 2011 in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Again enjoy this holiday weekend. And remember your heart, when you eat too, too much.

As ever,

Jim
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Saturday, April 9, 2011

Q83 – Mystery Jelly Plus - Quilt

Good Early Morning,

Our next and most recently completed quilts – Mystery Jelly Plus, (MJ+). MJ+ is now on its way to its new home in North Carolina.



Our thanks to Kimberly Einmo, for the impetus of our adaptation of her original design.

The beginnings of MJ+ is a nine-block square. We increased it to 20 blocks and included sashing as a border around and between each block. Also a double border has been added around the perimeter. The dimensions of MJ+: Width - 64 ½” (164 cms); Length – 77 ½” (197 cms).

The fabrics are from Moda’s fabric line Maison de Garance designed by French General. The base colors are red and chocolate and variations thereof. This very popular Moda line can be seen at their Moda website as well as is available through many distributors and fabric shops, including Fabric.com and Hancock’s of Paducah.

Here are a number of images of MJ+; front, close-ups, and back. Please note that the colors of this quilt may be affected somewhat by the outdoor lighting and the quality of my picture taking.




This is the same quilt that had the preliminary name of Mystery Jelly.

Check out our currently available quilts at Quilts SB Etsy.

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 or in red, it has found a home in a collection and is no longer available.

If you are interested, and would like some more information of any available quilts, regarding costs, shipping, and insurance, please check our Quilts SB Etsy shop.

If you have any questions and/or comments please feel free to get in touch with me via email.

We are currently working on and designing 9 more new quilts. Stay tuned for updates.

Enjoy,

Jim and Andy
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Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Q82 – Mauk I - Quilt

Evening,

Our next finished quilt, Mauk I, is the first of our Escher Series. Mauk I, formerly known as Escher I is our first challenge into the world of Tessellation Quilting. The new title is not intended to be a play-on flight as we envision the flock or school of birds or fish, respectively.


By definition, in Wikipedia –
A tessellation or tiling of the plane is a pattern of plane figures that fills the plane with no overlaps and no gaps… Tessellations frequently appeared in the art of M.C. Escher.

Anyone who knew me in my corporate life should remember the Escher prints I had in my offices. I am now intrigued at the possibility of transferring his ideas and knowledge to our quilts. This first quilt, Mauk I, is named for Maurits Cornelis Escher. Accordingly his nickname was “Mauk”.

Here are some more images of Mauk I. Please note that there may be some change in the true colors of the fabric due to my camera, the sunlight and shade, and your browser.




Mauk I is effectively a square quilt with equal Length and Width dimensions of 78” (198 cms). The basic construction is a long-standing quilt block pattern called Arabic Lattice. The earliest use of the Arabic Lattice in a quilt, that I found, is a quilt dating circa 1850. See My Quip for a further discussion. We have used four fabrics.
  1. Visual Arts – Simply Simple Quilts – Mocha, by Ro Gregg; Northcott - #2247-34
  2. From The Providence Collection, inspired by the collections of Colonial Williamsburg; Windham Fabrics - #28519-3 of Windham Fabrics.
  3. A pebbled-patterned black fabric.
  4. A solid black fabric.
All fabrics were obtained through Fabric.com.

We used templates created of Arabic Lattice by John Flynn to cut the fabric shapes.

Check out our currently available quilts at Quilts SB Etsy.

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 or in red, it has found a home in a collection and is no longer available.

If you are interested, and would like some more information of Mauk I and the available quilts, regarding costs, shipping, and insurance, please check our Quilts SB Etsy shop.

If you have any questions and/or comments please feel free to get in touch with me via email.

Enjoy,

Jim and Andy
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