My marriage quilt

If you’ve ever talked to me for more than about five minutes I’ve probably mentioned my wife. She is the singularly most awesome person in the universe. She may even be more awesome than Bee, and that is pretty freakin’ awesome. Getting her to marry me was the best con I’ve ever pulled off; I so married up. So, of course, when I started quilting I wanted to make a quilt for us, and that was the start of Opposites Attract:

thomas-knauer-sews-opposites-attract-quilt

Twenty years ago when we first met I doubt many would have picked us to end up a couple: she seemed like a perfectly nice and normal person; I, on the other hand, well… But lo and behold, twenty years later my favorite thing is still holding her hand and reading stories in bed with her. (Insert group “awwww.”) Hence the bits of Pear Tree reaching out to each other across the open spaces (cue metaphor here). But my favorite part of the quilt is that the dividing line between the off-white and the cream sections pretty much exactly marks how she and I share the bed. I tend to sleep up against the edge of the bed (I even to that when I have a bed to myself) and she wraps around me to steal my warmth, a perfect symbiotic system.

Of course that is not the only influence on this quilt. When I designed Opposites Attract I was thinking about one of my favorite paintings quilt a bit: Matisse’s Green Stripe:

matisse's green stripe

I have long loved pieces with a strong line of demarcation that appears to split a space apart. For me such lines are an opportunity create connections, to bridge divides. And of course I love asymmetry, so I see lines like Matisse’s as a means for producing a precarious balance, a harmony that must be worked at to be maintained. (Once again, cue that marriage metaphor).

Anyway, I love the heck out of this quilt, and love the fantastic quilting that Angela Walters did on it, how she played off of the two different spaces of the quilt:

thomas-knauer-sews-opposites-attract-detail

I love the floral-ish motif in the cream against the pebbling in the off-white. This quilt was so designed for quilting, to allow quilters to play in those open spaces to define the two voices or styles they see playing off of each other.

And finally the Opposites Attract quilt pattern is available in my shop for digital download. And tomorrow I’ll be picking up the physical versions from the printer so I can send them off to shops, and get the paper versions up in the shop as well. This is the last pattern from me until March, just in time for holiday shopping. Yay!!!

thomas-knauer-sews-opposites-attract-cover

Happy quilting everybody. Hope you have as much fun making this one as I did. As much as I want everyone to make it with Pear Tree, I am really excited to see this quilt in other fabric. I would really love to see it done in Repro fabric, but that is just my current love, but you’ll need to forget I said that for a while… (Ignore the man behind the curtain.)

Hugs,
Thomas

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