We hope you have a great festive season.
Mike made this tree in the 'tumbling block' pattern. Excited by our visit to the 'alt_quilts' exhibition at the American Folk Art Museum in New York a couple of months ago, he's been playing with interpretations ever since. The pattern, also known as 'rhombille tiling', 'dice lattice' and 'reversible cubes', has been around for a long time which might account for the proliferation of names ... it appears on an ancient mosaic on the Greek island of Delos, 11th century Italian floors and the '80s arcade game Q*bert. Quilters started to adopt it in the mid-19th century.
Below are two of the exhibits from the 'alt_quilts' exhibition. The first is by artist Stephen Sollins. It's made from used envelopes and just like a fabric quilt, each piece has special significance to either himself or someone close to him. He has a really beautiful body of work, see link below. The second pic shows a traditional tumbling block quilt made by Mrs. ED Lantz, from 1920-1930. (The exhibition finishes on 5 January, so if you happen to be in NY, don't delay.) Make sure you take a look at the work of Sabrina Gschwandtner on the link too ... quilt patterns made from 16mm film mounted on a lightbox. Incredible! The last pic is the 1982 Q*bert game, seen in Barcade, Brooklyn.
