Feb 11 08

Quilting Designs, Reeses’ Cup Expose, and Blog News!

This has been a busy week and most of the quilt-related stuff I did this week is not post-worthy, (remember when Elaine on “Seinfeld” was declaring whether the men in her life were “sponge-worthy” or not? This is the same kind of thing), but I made a small bit of progress on that quilt I last posted about. I decided mid-week that I really didn’t like this quilt, mainly because I think most of my fabric and color choices weren’t great, and I almost just trashed it, but then I figured I’d put enough time into it that I should just finish it. So, I did some hyperquilting of the base feathers:

frond-embellished-feather.gif

That is the frond-embellished feather. I think I may just do it on the base feathers and not the “off-shoot feathers,” because it makes the feathers look like they are evolving, or changing as they blossom or open up. Not sure about all that, but will think about it for a couple of days. I started to get some of the background quilting done as well:

soft-heart-background-quilt.gif

That’s not so easy to see, so I’ll show you some sample sandwiches from its design family and it will make better sense. This comes from a family of designs that is created by taking one design shape, (i.e. a plume), and rotating it around an axis. Here is the “baseline design,” which is created using a plume:

rotating-axis-plumes.gif

Now, if we take that design concept, but substitute a curley-cue for the plume, we get:

rotating-axis-curley-cues.gif

Now here’s the same thing except that we combine the plumes and curley cues into our “units:”

rotating-axis-plume-curleyc.gif

And here’s the same thing if we substitute hearts:

rotating-axis-hearts.gif

…and this last example is what I stitched in the background of that quilt. It is formed by using a heart with a softened central indentation:

rotating-axis-soft-hearts.gif

In other news, I want to take the opportunity of the Valentine’s “Season” to illustrate a concept that Ernie and I have learned. We are both madly in love with the Reeses’ Peanut Butter Cup…hands down, it is the all time favorite candy bar of all time for each of us. Since the candy companies seized on “fun-sized” seasonal candy bars years ago, we have been totally sucked in and feel a need to sample fun size candy bars of all kinds. Well, all fun sized bars are not alike. This concept is most sadly illustrated in the various fun-sized seasonal peanut butter cups put out by the Reeses Candy Company. The bottom line is that IT’S ALL ABOUT THE PEANUT BUTTER/CHOCOLATE RATIO. If that ratio is off, the peanut butter cup is ruined. Check out the picture below:

reeses-cups.gif

These are both fun-sized peanut butter hearts put out by Reeses for Valentines Day. The heart on the right is AWFUL and NOT fun at all, but the heart on the left is to die for……..well, not literally! Remember, it’s all about the ratio, and you heard it here first!

One more thing…since I know how to do links now, I want to introduce you to a great quilting blog that’s a group of Canadian quilt artists who take turns blogging. Check out the quilters at seven threads studio…great information and inspiration!

4 Comments

  1. Claudia Says:

    First of all, Patsy, I have to say I totally agree with you re: Reese’s PB cups and the chocolate to peanut filling ratio. IF it’s wrong, it’s just bad. I love the quilting on your new quilt. I’m working my way through your dvd’s because I have a major wedding quilt to do SOON, and I’m on Fast and Free Vol II now, but I”m hoping for these feathers and plumes rotated around an axis pretty soon….I own them all so I”ll get there eventually…Claudia W

  2. Sally Bramald Says:

    Peanut butter and chocolate? Doesn’t do it for me.
    I love all your background fillers, nice and elegant.

  3. Maggie Says:

    Hey Patsy!! Those background fillers are out of this world!!! Any chance you’d put them on your free downloads?

    I look forward to your blog changes every week and when you’re “late”, I worry! 🙂

    Maggie

    I agree, this family of fillers is fun and yes, they will all get into the free downloads section, along with some others from that same family, but not for awhile. They are part of the 3rd volume of Fast and Free and once that comes out, we’ll get them into the free downloads. (That will be sometime in 2008, but not exactly sure when yet!)

  4. Brigitte Haydel Says:

    Sally….how in the world do you sleep with all of these designs swimming through your head? You amaze me.