Quilts of nebulae and galaxies

Jimmy McBride makes magnificent intergalactic quilts, like M1 V2 (The Crab Nebula) seen above. They are >$12,000 and available on Etsy. More details about the process and products at his Intergalactic Transport blog. (via @arielwaldman)

• [Mike Noordijk]

  $13,000?? Are they to scale or something?

  • [Ramone]

    Try replicating that in fabric and you’ll soon understand why. 

    /married a quilter

    • [Mike Noordijk]

       I’m familiar with what’s involved in quilt making, and I still am not seeing the $13,000.  I guess you can append the title “art” to anything and shut down discussions of price and value, and if there’s a market then god bless him, but I remain personally stunned by the price.  YMMV

• [Donald Petersen]

  Well, we always end up talking about the sticker shock with things like this, anyway.  The way I see it, your high-rolling well-heeled astronomy-loving quilt-cuddlers need to shop somewhere.  Like anything, it’s worth what someone’s willing to pay for it.  If it doesn’t sell, either the price gets lowered or the seller ends up with excess inventory.  Maybe you and I can’t imagine investing so much in stitchery that isn’t, say, an antique Persian rug.  But then, I dunno about you but I’m neither a quilt-freak nor deep-pocketed.  It’s a pity for me, since these are well beyond my reach.  They’re pretty, and doubtless labor-intensive and talent-intensive to make.

• [parrotboy]

  Gorgeous, but so far out of my reach that I cannot imagine ever feeling comfortable sleeping under one.  I’d be terrified of tearing it or farting or anything.

• [Sarah Henry]

  Is it pricy… yes, but unless you’ve made one you can’t possibly understand the sheer amount of time that goes into making one. I’m sure we are talking about months… and that’s assuming it wasn’t hand quilted. Of course being a quilter I would just make my own, but before you start talking about how hideously over priced something is try making one first. It can be annoying when people want what you can make but are never willing to fork out for your time and effort. 

  Having said that $13,000 is a fair bit much. After all, assuming it takes 2 months to make one… how many people do you know that make that much in two months? But they are amazing and beautiful.

  • [Guest]

    +/-  85K/year? That’s a lot, but not a lot a lot.

• [Tina Rathbone]

  Gosh, people: you don’t sleep under an Art Quilt. Check out sites like SAQA, Visions Art Museum, and many others to see the State of the Art in Art Quilts. And yes, many sell at these prices. This quilt-maker pieced, that is, sewed, all these various fabric pieces together. That’s a very time-consuming prospect. Please study up a bit before you undermine the artist with comments like (“it took 2 months to make”). Even if it did, which would me in my quilt-making experience, a miracle, it’s worth what the artist wants to charge. And again, it’s art for the wall, like a painting, sculpture, or any other art form. It just happens to be made of fabric as the medium.

• [robuluz]

  And again, it’s art for the wall, like a painting, sculpture, or any other art form. It just happens to be made of fabric as the medium.

  Oh OK, that clears that up. I thought it was an amazing but wildly overpriced piece of bed linen, now I know it’s an appropriately priced but slightly crap piece of wall art.

  • [Genre Slur]

    Second rate humour, in my opinion. Try again Dr. Smarty Pants.

    • [robuluz]

      Normally such pettiness would be beneath me, but the solemn testimonies to the demands of quilting got the better of me. I couldn’t control myself.
       
      It’s an awesome object. I’ve smacked myself on the hand, but I retract nothing.

    • [Oliver Schmieding]

      naah, he’s right. 
      we even have a word for stuff like that: “kitsch”  :)
      you can hate it, or — ah, well. 

• [Genre Slur]

  Good stuff. Good price, given the nature of the pieces.

• [Rob Hobson]

  Wow, they’re very impressive, they’re… how much?

  Gosh. So not for sleeping under, I assume. Still, very impressive.

• [travtastic]

  I love how these take mooooonths to create, seriously you guys! And he has 16 of them for sale at one time.

  • [Aaron Thomas Sherwin]

    I’m sorry, have you tried to make a quality quilt and sell it at a fair price?  I’m guessing he has 16 of them for sale at one time because they also take months to sell.  People who buy $10,000+ quilts are few and far between, but that does not mean they are not worth $10,000+.  My mother is a quilter, she does it because she loves it, not because it is easy money.

    • [Aaron Thomas Sherwin]

      Also, if you look at his blog, there is in fact a timeline of how long it takes to make one.

    • [travtastic]

      So is this the go-to comment now for anytime selling price is brought up, on any subject? I have to literally hand-produce the item before I can post a valid comment?

    • [Donald Petersen]

      People who buy $10,000+ quilts are few and far between, but that does not mean they are not worth $10,000+.

      I think I’ll stick to what I said above, when it comes to dollar value (as opposed to, say, sentimental value): it’s worth what someone’s willing to pay for it.  I know people who have spent a couple hundred hours or less typing a story idea into a screenplay, and after a bidding war between a couple studios the screenplay sells in the high six figures… or more.  Doesn’t happen often anymore, but it has.  Sometimes those scripts get made into movies, sometimes they get bought and are never seen or heard of again.  I also know people who have spent thousands of hours doing the same thing, on much better stories, who end up getting no money whatsoever for all their work.  Can any of those writers set their own price?

      You can hang a high-dollar price tag on your work all you want, but if nobody’s paying it, it’s tough to argue that anyone but yourself values it that high.

• [chortick]

  I once saw a carver at a show, making a scrimshaw handle for a large-ish knife out of an antler.  He had carved an incredibly detailed woodland scene with a wolf as the central feature.  I asked him how long he had been carving that handle, he shrugged and said that it had taken perhaps 1000 hours so far.  That’s half a year’s work… clearly a labour of love, or the fruit of some compulsion.  Best case, he might get a buck an hour for his time.

  • [Amy L Sacks]

    If he did get the whole grand, more power to him.

    I’ve tried pricing larger things I’ve done with the dollar-per-hour in mind, but no dice so far as buyers.  So I’ve switched to doing much smaller works that I can price more “realistically.”

• [M Carlson]

  Well, I’ll just come in and say that’s incredibly beautiful and good on ‘im for putting such effort into a very cool thing. I hope he sells all he has.

• [Gemma]

  [This was supposed to be in reply to travtastic.]

  The sixteen range in price quite widely: starting at $1,750; and half are $5,000 or less.

  I think they’re beautiful. A bit out of my league though.

• [woid]

  Good news for Boingers… A special price on my Arduino-driven 3-D printed Lego version, <$120,000 (while they last)!

• [Amy L Sacks]

  I admit it’s a great concept, but aesthetically it’s not doing much for me. :/