This week for our Midweek Creative Nudge, I just want to make you smile. Or maybe I should say…help you smile. A few weeks ago I shared a story about a close encounter with a pair of cheetahs during my trip to the Serengeti. A lot of people have asked me if it is hard to stop traveling, and the answer is no, now I have time to work on my photos and art, not to mention having more time with my family. Like I’ve said before, my mom taught me to always look on the bright side of life…you know…like the Monty Python song. Ha.
Anyway I am kind of cheating by giving you a sneak peek of 2 glorious collections (Serengeti and Illuminations) we received this week from designer Dan Morris who is an old friend. When I ordered these collections several months ago I was so excited, because Dan has really outdone himself. I get just as much joy looking at a masterpiece in a museum, as I get from jaw-dropping artwork like this.
So have a look and see if you agree. It brings back my most happy memories from that trip I took to photograph the Great Migration on the Serengeti Plains in Tanzania. I also hope that these dazzling colors inspire you to go into your studio or sewing room and create something that fills your heart with joy. We all need some of that right now. Thanks Dan!
Watch for a new video link in the bottom of Saturday night’s newsletter. We’ll be sharing the 1 hour Virtual Opening Reception from the International Quilt Museum’s exhibit “For the Love of Gaia” with most of the artists joining from around the world, to tell us about their artwork.
Our Free Quilt Pattern this week captures that magical moment when a deep snow is falling in the silence of the forest, and the wildlife ventures out in the golden light of a candlelit chapel. With the stars twinkling above and the gentle babble of a reflective stream, it is a meditative image to heal the soul.
To make this 43″ x 58″ quilt design, you will start with the beautiful scenic panel…digital printed to capture the painterly details. Add 2 winter coordinates and 3 Hoffman Hand-Dyes to make the pieced border.
Order the pattern as configured, or customize it to your liking with any of our thousands of fabrics. Just place your desired fabrics in your Wish List, and these fabrics will appear in the Fabric Selector below the pattern.
This weekend I was supposed to be in Lincoln Nebraska for the Opening Reception of the environmental-themed exhibit “For the Love of Gaia” ….as a guest curator for the International Quilt Museum. Instead we had a virtual opening event on Zoom last night, and thankfully most of the artists were able to attend, including artists from Australia, Canada and the UK. So the silver lining is…we were able to include our international artists! Thank you to the IQM staff for making this happen. We recorded a video of the event which I will share with you this week.
The Tokyo Quilt Festival has officially cancelled their event for January 2021. QuiltCon is taking their Feb 2021 event online and we are a Gold sponsor. I feel like we are all blindly making our way through a dark tunnel – together. For those of you who are stressed out and frustrated – I can relate – but we are all right here together in this same strange place of not knowing what is going to happen but needing to keep our families and co-workers safe. And we can only hope that the people around us are also committed to keeping us safe. I am grateful that we were able to build a company culture of safety at the beginning of this madness, for our family business and our employees.
Fortunately we still have Nature to bless us with her healing colors and sounds. It seems like a really good time to learn more about birds, for instance. Remember last September when we were warned that we’ve lost 3 billion birds in the last 50 years? That problem has not gone away, but during this shutdown many of us have stopped not just to smell the flowers, but also to listen to the birds, and look for the bees. I have become more attuned to the bird songs in my neighborhood, and have downloaded an app to help identify bird calls. Those of you Audubon members and Bird Watchers are way ahead of me, but I must admit that now I listen for the birds that sing at dusk and dawn now, and I find a special poignant beauty as their warbling tune rings out across the darkening sky.
Flowers and birds are two of our most popular motifs, which is why we have featured them in this e-newsletter. As we fill our quilts with the images that bring us comfort and joy, we are nurturing ourselves and our loved ones, to help us get to the other side of the dark tunnel with our sanity intact.
Hummingbirds are the topic of this lovely quilt design, and you will fussy cut your favorite hummers to set them in a ‘shadow’ backdrop. Alternating Floral and Bird blocks are set in a modified Irish Chain design, in soothing colors of Water and Sky.
We are hoping that this avian-themed quilt will bring a sense of peace and calm until you can get outside into the forest again. It is our connection to Nature which grounds us during troubled times, and we found this quilt transported us to a summertime meadow filled with the buzzing of hummingbirds and bees, and the gentle swishing of wildflowers.
Order the pattern as configured, or customize it to your liking with any of our thousands of fabrics. Just place your desired fabrics in your Wish List, and these fabrics will appear in the Fabric Selector below the pattern.
Over the last week I have been sad to see some quilters are squabbling online about politics vs human rights issues. The topic of racial discrimination, which is a human rights and moral issue, has been politicized and is being banned from some social media platforms for that reason. I wrote about this a few weeks ago, but let me say it again.
There is no room in our country or in this quilt industry for racial injustice, and it is time for all of us to join together under the banner of HUMANITY. Stop allowing others to politicize what is even more foundational – human rights and racial justice are moral and ethical issues. This has an even greater weight than politics. Call it the Golden Rule, Karma, or just plain and simple Doing-The-Right-Thing. Don’t let someone stop you from speaking the truth or protecting someone who is being attacked because of their race.
One of the biggest trends in art…and quilting…is Activism for topics such as Environmental Conservation, Human Rights, Diversity and Racial Injustice. There are those who try to get us to stop talking about this, but there is a wave of change and TRUTH that is washing over this land and we will all feel better if we can ride this wave together and be a part of the change that is coming. Humanity is trying to evolve. I am convinced of this. Be a part of this Evolution. It starts with LOVE.
Now back to our regular programming.
The last two days I’ve been a facilitator in the Asian-Pacific color trend forecasting event for the Color Marketing Group. I participated in a North American forecasting event last month. We are attempting to predict what the world will be like 2 years from now. Crazy, huh? This weekend I listened to product designers in China, Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan, Thailand and Australia…and we hammered out a vision that will guide eQuilter and other CMG members as we navigate these choppy waters for the next year or two.
Collaboration and Resiliency are two key concepts…i.e. those who want to do everything the same old way, and those who are rigidly inflexible, will have the hardest time. Just keep breathing…we are all going to get to the other side of this together. Well, most of us will get to the other side. I just heard about a quilt shop owner in our area who survived the virus, and we know several families who have lost loved ones now, so this is clearly not a time for magical thinking.
As part of our guidelines to keep our staff safe, we are not seeing any sales reps in-person this quarter, or until we feel it is safe. We are still placing orders for future shipments, but we are doing so by Zoom online appointments, or having artwork dropped off so we can write the orders ourselves. I will not be attending Houston Quilt Market or Quilt Festival. Just so you know, we are all still following strict safety protocols in our office and warehouse. We are still wearing masks, practicing social distancing, disinfecting surfaces, and washing hands. This is for our staff, our families, and for YOU – our customers.
We are also donating personally and as a business, to organizations who are supporting those affected by recent and ongoing racial injustice issues. If you have been a customer for awhile, you already know about our commitment to these kind of human rights topics through our charity program, which has donated almost $1.7 million over 21 years.
It was just announced that the Tokyo Quilt Festival for Jan 2021 has been cancelled, so the photos I took a few months ago in Japan are even more precious…
sharing your Passion for Fabric… Luana and Paul
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Did your mom read you that classic illustrated book “Jolly Old Santa Claus” as a kid? Do you remember your dad reading “Twas the Night Before Christmas….” on Christmas Eve?
This week’s Free Quilt Pattern celebrates that line “Now Dash Away, Dash Away, Dash Away All!” with a fantastic illustration panel that recalls the artwork of Jolly Old Santa Claus. I still have an old tattered copy from my childhood, and it was well-loved by our 3 kids!
To make this 54″ x 67″ quilt design, you will start with this incredibly detailed digital-printed panel, then add the Hoffman Snowflake Ombres with Silver Metallic, and add a slice of Ruby Hoffman Hand-Dye for a pop of color.
Order the pattern as configured, or customize it to your liking with any of our thousands of fabrics. Just place your desired fabrics in your Wish List, and these fabrics will appear in the Fabric Selector below the pattern.
A few hours ago we marked the Summer Solstice here in Colorado, on this longest day of the year. If you live in the Southern Hemisphere, today is the Winter Solstice, the longest night of the year.
We kind of lost our Spring season to the pandemic, huh? Most of us have been hunkered down, hoping the storm would blow over, but it seems clear it is here to stay for awhile. Even Stonehenge was closed down for this year’s Solstice. Now we are learning how to live with this…the ‘new normal’. So we hope your First Day of Summer gives you the opportunity to celebrate the season with your loved ones and a few favorite summertime traditions.
We also wish you a Happy Fathers Day! Over the years, more and more of our customers and friends are fathers (it used to be mostly mothers and grandmothers) and we are happy to see how many dads pulled out the sewing machine to make masks over the last few months! So we salute all of you Patriarchs who have gone from mask-making to Patchwork. Welcome to the wonderful world of quilting and stitching!
with Hope for the Future, Luana and Paul
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We are excited to share today’s exclusive eQuilter Free Quilt Pattern, featuring one of our favorite wildlife artists – Abraham Hunter. This bird collection has been one of our most popular over the last several months, bringing cheerful outdoor Nature scenes to us just when we need it most!
Cardinals, Goldfinches, Bluebirds & Chickadees perch on the branches of a blossoming Dogwood tree, with a rustic wood bird feeder. If you are an avid birder or Audubon member, this quilt is just for you!
This 59″ x 67″ quilt design uses a large scenic panel, another block panel with small bird vignettes, 3 collection coordinates and 2 Hoffman Hand-Dyes to create this colorful scenic quilt that is so detailed and lifelike, you can almost hear the birds sing!
Order the pattern as configured, or customize it to your liking with any of our thousands of fabrics. Just place your desired fabrics in your Wish List, and these fabrics will appear in the Fabric Selector below the pattern.
Last week I had an amazing experience while riding home with Sophie after her violin lesson just outside of Boulder. Sophie is turning 18 next week, so naturally she wants to drive as much as possible…and being a passenger has freed me up to enjoy the scenery. On the way home as we passed the green fields and farms, I suddenly realized there was a team of draft horses pulling a mowing rig in a field! Holy Moly! I rushed home, grabbed my camera, and drove back. I stayed for about a half hour and photographed 2 teams of draft horses who were circling the field and mowing the hay. The sky was blue, the mountains were green and the snowy peaks were shining in the afternoon sun. It was perfect!
Since my traveling days are over for awhile, I’ve been itching to get out and take photos again. Today I went through these photos to see what I got. This week the mountains are hazy with smoke from fires in Southwest Colorado and Arizona. We can no longer see those sharp snowy peaks beyond our green foothills. Boy was I lucky, and I am so glad I went home for the camera!
I called my mom to tell her about what I photographed. She has been in lockdown in her nursing home for 3 months now. As I described the scene in the field, she started to remember a story from her childhood. When she was a kid she lived on a farm in Oregon and went to a one room schoolhouse. She would ride her horse to school bareback, and park her mare in a field across the dirt road from the school. She said, “It’s a lot easier to ride a horse bareback than with a saddle – you can feel the horse and the horse can feel you too.”
So I started to think about making hay while the sun shines, grabbing a camera when you see something amazing, riding a horse bareback instead of walking, and making the best of what every day brings…and for many of us it has been sewing masks or perhaps now working on long overdue quilt projects while the virus has hit the Pause Button in our lives.
It is a blessing to find the good in each day, and find gratitude for those gifts. I wish you all a day filled with blessings.
sharing your Passion for Fabric… Luana and Paul
* The photo collage above includes a photo by Luana, plus fabrics currently in stock at eQuilter.
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To make this 67″ x 67″ quilt design, you will start with a panel with portrait blocks, then piece with 2 Hoffman Hand-Dyes (Pink Lemonade and Mint), and finish with the coordinating Stripe for the border. The ice cream colors of this breezy quilt design make it a joy to construct, and some special little person is going to have enchanting dreams sleeping under this sweet Nap-time Quilt.
Order the pattern as configured, or customize it to your liking with any of our thousands of fabrics. Just place your desired fabrics in your Wish List, and these fabrics will appear in the Fabric Selector below the pattern.
