My Quip – Quilts In Progress – Not Til D25 – Was She A Chain-Smoker?

Afternoon,

The weather here in Tampa is beautiful. The house is open and there ain’t no humidity. Exercise, albeit roller-blading, is complete. This week I managed 51 miles, converted for ya’ll that live way up north… that’s 82.08 kilometers on cross-country skiis.

Question: Does anyone have a dog who constantly barks herself hoarse? We do, and she’s constantly yapping at anything that moves, all 10 pounds of her, and then she hacks. I wonder if she was a chain-smoker in a past life?

Due to the absence of my desktop for a couple of days last week, the next two designs in our OP Noël Series; OP Ornament and OP Noël have been postponed a bit. Now that the motherboard has been replaced, I will be scanning in the fabrics for the two new designs.

In the meantime we decided to look at our Christmas fabric stash, mainly from cuttings of our quilts: Christmas Harlequin (Q9); Christmas Harlequin Plus (Q15); and Christmas Harlequin Classic (Q16), and design another abstract, sort-of, new one.

I borrowed the block pattern Indy 500 from Kumiko Sudo’s book “East Quilts West” and the cutting of fabric began. Andy created 160 rectangles, each with five fabrics. Eight rectangles, which will be sewn together, will create a 16-inch, (40.64-centimeter), square. The new quilt should be, when finished, 64 inches, (162.6 cms), wide and 80 inches, (203.2 cms), in length.

The new quilt will be called Not Til D25. That explanation will come later. Here are a few images of Not Til D25 under construction. Sudo's Indy 500 block pattern and fabric is organized, our's is not.

Enjoy your weekend.

Jim

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My Quip - Out Damn Ghost!

Good Afternoon,

Well here’s the story with my PC, and a slight delay to our quilting. The motherboard gave up the ghost.

From what I’ve read and sort of understand, a motherboard may hardly ever breakdown, but that there are a number of forces that can cause one to do so. These forces coupled together, in my case, include extreme power capacity, electric surges from a power source, and dust and dog hair. There are a number of other issues that are minor but can also add to the problem. Well it happened to me. Also the kick in of extra power of the faulty external drive further impacted this situation. Solution - new motherboard, and I should be getting my desktop back soon.

It is delaying my design work on the new quilts for the OP Series. Andy’s been waiting for the next design. This afternoon we decided to work on an alternate design using fabrics from some of our previous Christmas designs. This new design will be based on a block pattern called Indy 500 from Kumiko Sudo’s book, East Quilts West.

Just a note, we have now submitted 12 of our quilts for the November 6, As Your Garden Grows Quilt Show. It will be held at the University of South Florida Botanical Gardens.

Enjoy,

Jim

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Q66 – Christmas Quilts – OP Angel

Evening,

And we try to produce a new quilt at least once a week, and today’s new quilt is our third entry to our OP Noël Series – OP Angel. This is a companion quilt, albeit a new piece to our other two introductions Noël Diptych at Q63 and OP Noël II at Q64.

This construction is an original design in which I am playing with the optical art format. You will notice a repeat and an overlap of the use of similar fabrics between the three quilts of the OP Noël Series. The dimensions of OP Angel are Length – 59” (149.9 cms), and Width – 80” (203.2 cms). All-things-being-equal you can reverse the dimensions. Check out the wings of the Angel in the optical design.

The construction is a simple confluence or horizontal and vertical rows of rectangles. The quilting is parallel lines at about ½ inch (1.27 cms) apart. (Thanks once again to Sushma Patel Bould. We really do like this simple and clean form of quilt stitching. I believe there are over 76,000 stitches.) The backing is a cream to blend and match to the folksy Angel and Christmas fabric and the binding is the same as the green print. (See My Quip dated September 6.)

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

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 – OP Noël I and OP Ornament.

Enjoy,

Jim and Andy

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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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