My Quip - Moon Over Bayshore - Question/Answer

Good Day,

Andy and I just received a question.

"I just saw your recent post. Thanks for sharing your process. One question. I saw the muslin strips and they seemed to be sewn together vertically. Do you take the strips apart, cut each strip apart and then sew the final fabric on to the pieces of muslin—then sew everything back together. So, you would lose a few inches from the original design size…..sort of like paper piecing?" - Carole Lyles Shaw

In this case, Moon Over Bayshore, the strips are cut vertically at different widths. (The widths are totally up you.) They are then sewed together to create the canvas, in this 38 strips...in others as many strips as we decide the approximate wide of the final product.

Then the picture/design is drawn on the canvas. At this point the piecing fabrics are determined as to what will go where.

Next the fabrics are cut and pieced to the strips as determined.

Once all strips are pieced they are sewn back together again.

We are not losing any of the original design/drawing size.

That's how I came up with the original, (to us), concept of piecing and drawing using strips. It is a combination of strip piecing, drawing, and piecing.

Our Cosmo's Moon was created in the same way. It is funny that a lot of people assume that we are appliqueing.

Thanks for the question, Carole Lyles Shaw.

Please feel free to ask, comment, question, and pass along ideas. Feel free to email us at Quilts SB

Enjoy,

Jim and Andy

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My Quip – A New Quilt on the Way – Moon Over Bayshore

Good Day,

About four months ago Andy and I were asked if we would consider creating a queen-size quilt. This new quilt would be a construction inspired by our own work, Cosmo’s Moon.

Why not? We’re always open to a challenge. The new work would not be a duplicate but a new and different original.

After listening to our client, I drafted a quick digital painting.

Yes that is it. This would be the beginning of the new quilt, Moon Over Bayshore.

The next step was to pick the fabric to be used. The moon will be the central theme of the piece and the sky will hopefully portray that time between the end of the evening, maybe the start of a new day… It will be that period of time when there is a magic in the beginning of a new day. All fabric was chosen from SewBatik.

Our technique is to create a muslin canvas of approximately 38 strips sewn together. It is roughly the size of the queen-size spread including a 10-inch overhand for the sides and the bottom of the quilt.

The canvas created the medium to allow the drawing of the draft of the scene: the moon, the buildings; the girders, et al.  With a completed draft, we then decided which of the graduated fabrics are to go where...sort of like working a jig-saw puzzle.  Or for that matter a "paint-by-number" scene.

Andy then pieces the fabric to match my draft and design. All-things-being-equal it will take a couple or four weeks to sew all the strips.

At this point in time 9 of 38 strips have been pieced.

Once the strips are all completed they are sewn back together again.  This time, and we cross our fingers, Moon Over Bayshore - the top, will be completed.  The approximate dimensions of the top are 90" (230 cms) long and 80" (200 cms) wide.

Next step is the creation of the the quilt-wich. In this case 4-layers - The muslin strips, the attached top pieces, the batting, and the backing.

Then comes the next phase. The quilting design - the Moon; the reflection of the corona; the sky; the buildings and their shadows; the standing girders. Andy will be using two types of sewing to quilt - continuous and start-and-stop.

Next the binding and then the label.

Then the delivery.

If you have any questions, comments, thoughts, ideas...or just want to drop us an email feel free at Quilts SB.

Enjoy,

Jim and Andy

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My Quip - Quilts On The Road and Two in Progress

Good Day,

Just a quick note -

Our Chopsticks and Warhol's Itch, will be on display at The Home Machine Quilting Show (HMQS) 2015 in Salt Lake City, Utah 7th-9th May.

Also our Warhol's Itch and Sleep Jezebel have been accepted for entry and display to The Festival of Quilts 2015, 6th-9th August at NEC, Birmingham, England.

Our Betty Whites are currently a part of the Notable Women Quilt Initiative and will be on display at Quiltworks in Bend, Oregon for the month of June, 2015.

Our Hoffman Challenge Quilts -

Light Bringer will be in Yakima, Washington May 13th-16th and Albany, Ohio July 21st-26th.

Sea and Sky will be in Chula Vista, California, May 15th-16th.

Diamonds will be in Lemon Grove, California October 17th.

And right now on the tables, in progress, are two new ones - An Unnamed Classic

and Moon Over Broadway.

Enjoy,

Jim and Andy

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Q128 – Crystal – A New Arrival – A Little Quilt

Good Day,

Well our 128th quilt has been completed. Please welcome Crystal to our collection.

And Crystal welcomes the arrival of a little one, a grand-niece, in Delaware. This is her quilt.

Crystal is a little bit traditional, somewhat contemporary, and a smidgen modern. But it had to be shades of purple and lavender. Andy and I think that the final product worked.

The pattern and concept for Crystal is inspired by images we discovered of similar quilts presented by Helen Kipling of Darlington, England, Andie Johnson of Ohio, USA. Andy and I decided to create something similar. The idea is concentric squares created with triangles and squares. We used CorelDraw7 to create a design and pattern.

The purple, lilac, lavender, and white fabrics were chosen and cut.

All corresponding fabric cuts were pieced together to create squares.

The squares were then arranged into strips, corresponding to the gradation pattern that we had determined.

All strips then were sewn together to create the inner top of our Crystal.

Next the finished top was pinned, in order to stabilize, to the batting and the chosen background

Our Crystal includes a ruffle to provide that little bit of extra.

The dimensions of our Crystal are approximately 42-inch square, edge-to-edge including the ruffle.

Crystal was then quilted, the ruffle was added and incorporated into the binding. Here are some more images.

The label was created and attached. And we present some images of the back of Crystal.

Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions, thoughts, ideas, and comments at Quilts SB.

Enjoy,

Jim and Andy

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Q127 – Chopsticks – Lap Size Quilt

Good Day,

Our new Chopsticks has been completed. This is our 127th quilt.

What do you get when you have an extra jelly roll, Chop Chop by Robert Kaufman by the Lunn Studios?

And you also have Karen Fisher’s 2012 book Easy Grid Quilts.

 Put them together and the result is our new afghan quilt, Chopsticks.

Using CorelDraw X7 I composed two possible drafts of what we thought we would like our Chopsticks to look like.

Andy and I settled on our second design as it was more like the graphic of “Glowing Lights” I had found on the Internet.

The inner top of our Chopsticks is a composition of 1,200 1 ½” by 5 ½” strips, all cut from the Chop Chop jelly roll. The strips were sewn and all constructed 120 blocks; 10 strips per block. And yes the pattern is reminiscent of the tried and true pattern, Rail Fence.

We also chose which complimentary fabrics we would like to use to create the various borders.

Our quilting design is a combination of diagonal lines, cross-hatch, and stitch-in-the-ditch. 29 of the 120 blocks were chosen to have the cross-hatch quilting.  Why?  You guess.

Andy spent a good time burying the starts and stops. And if I say so myself, Chopsticks turned out to be a very nice large lap size quilt. The dimensions: Width – 56” (142 cms); Length – 66” (168 cms).

Andy and I are very pleased with the final outcome.

Here are some images of our Chopsticks –

And some images of the reverse –

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Chopsticks has been accepted for display and judging at the HMQS 2015 Quilt Competition in Salt Lake City to be held May 7-9, 2015. If you get a chance, the show will be at the South Towne Exposition Center in Sandy, Utah.

If you have any questions, thoughts, ideas, and comments please feel free to email Andy or me at Quilts SB.

Also please note that our Quilts SB new URL address is http://www.quiltssb.com.

Enjoy,

Jim and Andy

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