We are just head-over-heels in love with the fantastic artwork featured in this week’s exclusive eQuilter Free Quilt Pattern! The Quilter’s Lighthouse can be viewed as realistic or symbolic, and the artwork in the sky and water is just incredible.
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.
Do you remember back when crazy big flower
quilts and crazy huge flower prints were considered…well…crazy?
My how times have changed.
I remember when we first started carrying those
huge flower prints, so many people would ask “but what do you DO with
these?” …and of course now everybody knows what to do with them. You cut
them up and put them in a quilt, of course! …or you buy a giant
flower panel and quilt the heck out of it.
Remember when we first started seeing huge detailed flower art quilts, and it
was such a revelation? Now if you are going to do a big flower in a quilt, it
better be spectacular. Think Andrea Brokenshire’s quilts, for instance.
Here is a big flower quilt (above) from the Tokyo Quilt Festival that I just
love. It is more on the simple side, rather than the detailed artsy end of the
scale. It is graphic and bold, with a simple color palette, and the clever use
of tiny couched bias strips for flower petals. You can see detail images on my Tokyo Quilt Festival
page. (More photos coming soon, I promise!)
Sophie and I just got home yesterday, and she had an orchestra concert tonight.
It was 5 degrees when we came home. Quite a shock after our quick stop in
Hawaii, on the way home from Tokyo. (We stopped to visit the gravesite of
Paul’s parents there.) I am catching up on emails and will
post Tokyo photos over the next week or so. Japanese quilters are
experimenting more with color, techniques, and machine quilting. The very rigid
structure of studying with a sensei (master teacher) is sure to evolve as
younger quilters are drawn to new ideas. Watch that space!
Luana’s Travel Calendar:
Feb 19-22 – QuiltCon in Austin TX
Mar 18-27 – Wilderness Congress – Jaipur India
June 26-27 – Intl Quilt Museum – Lincoln NE
July 29 – Aug 2 – “Love Your Mother” Gallery in Birmingham UK
Succulents are a hot trend in gardening, art and interior design. Succulent fabric designs are part of this Southwest Modern lifestyle trend…not just for Hipsters!
The delicate but sturdy symmetrical beauty of these plants are beloved by those who live a busy life and need a low maintenance window garden. This week’s Free Quilt Design extends the Love-of-Succulents to a quilt for a small bed or a big wall hanging…or maybe a nap on the porch on a chilly desert evening.
This 62″ x 75″ quilt design features curated Succulent terrariums, mixing shapes and sizes into bouquets of color. These vignette blocks are set into a background and frames using 2 Hoffman Hand-Dyes, bordered by a festive succulent allover print.
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.
Luana’s Travel Calendar: Jan 24-Feb 2, 2020 – Tokyo Quilt Festival Feb 19-22 – QuiltCon in Austin TX Mar 18-27 – Wilderness Congress – Jaipur India June 17-21 – Quilt Canada – Edmonton June 26-27 – Intl Quilt Museum – Lincoln NE July 29 – Aug 2 – “Love Your Mother” Gallery in Birmingham UK
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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.
In this 51″ x 51″ exclusive eQuilter Free Quilt Pattern, we’ve combined Songbirds prints from Elizabeth Studio and Timeless Treasure, with 3 different Stonehenge textures from Northcott. You can almost hear the twittering of the birds, and the rustling of the leaves.
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.
Greetings from Tokyo! I am writing to you a few minutes before I check out of my room and head to the airport. Sophie and I have had a very busy and wonderful 4 day visit here at the Tokyo Quilt Festival. After many years of traveling to this show, meeting local quilt artists, and photographing the show…we have many wonderful friends here.
As you probably know, Japanese quilts are quite distinctive compared to what we see at shows in the US. For many years the difference had to do with most of the quilts being made by hand. The Japanese motifs and vintage Japanese fabrics (including yukata and silk kimono remnants re-used in quilts) were another part of the distinction. Over the years we have watched the waves of trends here, and I would say the trends of Taupe and even Indigo fabrics is lessening in favor of more colorful and contemporary themes and techniques. That is the evolution of the art form – creative people are always looking for something new to excite their creativity.
As I have written in the past couple years, one of the bigger changes is the expansion of machine quilting here in Japan. In some ways this makes the quilts more similar to the US quilts, but we still delight in the differences…the motifs and fabrics that stand out because they are uniquely Japanese.
In the center panel of the collage above, you see a detail of a beautiful Chrysanthemum applique and embroidery quilt. The variety of fabrics used in the Mum petals is distinctive, and also the white embroidery on the charcoal black background. The essence is still Japanese, but there is a contemporary influence. The name of the quilter was not spelled out, so I have included an image of the name written in characters, to make sure the artist has credit where it is due.
Around the borders I have added some lovely Japanese fabric designs we have in stock now. We are headed to the airport now so watch for my photos in the next week or two, as I have time to edit and post on my photo page. Sayonara to my Japanese quilter friends!
Luana’s Travel Calendar: Feb 19-22 – QuiltCon in Austin TX Mar 18-27 – Wilderness Congress – Jaipur India June 26-27 – Intl Quilt Museum – Lincoln NE July 29 – Aug 2 – “Love Your Mother” Gallery in Birmingham UK
This colorful eQuilter Free Quilt Design starts with a panel of three elegant cat blocks along with two allover kitty prints, then adds Northcott Stonehenge tonal prints and a Hoffman Hand Dye to piece the quilt. The clever piecing frames each kitty scene to create a quilt full of museum-like masterpieces.
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.
Sophie and I arrived in Tokyo at Narita Airport after an 11 hour nonstop flight. Over the years it has gotten so much easier to get to this show at the Tokyo Dome. It used to take 2 flights and sometimes I’d get stuck in Seattle, Alaska or San Francisco on the way, due to delays. We are staying in the Tokyo Dome Hotel and we have a birds eye view of the entrance to the show from our window. When we arrived at the hotel, we saw several old friends in the lobby including Lisa Walton, the president of SAQA, who is leading a tour from Australia.
We slept for 10 hours and we’re up early to go in and take photos of the quilts, and then meet up with our quilter friends here in Japan. This is my 12th time to this show, but I’ve been traveling to Japan since the 80s when I lived in Hong Kong and worked in the garment industry as an import designer. In those days I traveled to Osaka, and it was a very different time. I worked as a designer for a big garment agent with offices in 6 countries, and I would travel to Japan to source textiles for their big name designers in New York.
You can see my photos from trips to Japan and the Tokyo Quilt Festival on this page and while you enjoy those photos, I’ll be at the show here taking photos of the 2020 event. I do urge everyone who attend the show here to make sure to photograph the artist’s namecard to give credit where it is due. Over the years there has been a huge increase in the number of Western tour groups coming to see the show, posting photos but often without credit.
Last year you may have seen the invitation and link that I posted, for Western quilt artists to enter the Tokyo Quilt Show. I will share that information again for the 2021 show, and I hope you’ll consider sending an entry for consideration. This show is opening up more to accept international entries and it is a great opportunity for artists around the world to be seen by a whole new audience, which is very exciting!
I’ll be posting from the show floor on my Facebook page, and then my individual quilt photos will start to pop up on my photo page in about a week. QuiltCon is next month and I’ll be attending that show to document with photos as well.
Luana’s Travel Calendar: Jan 24-Feb 2, 2020 – Tokyo Quilt Festival Feb 19-22 – QuiltCon in Austin TX Mar 18-27 – Wilderness Congress – Jaipur India June 17-21 – Quilt Canada – Edmonton June 26-27 – Intl Quilt Museum – Lincoln NE July 29 – Aug 2 – “Love Your Mother” Gallery in Birmingham UK
This generous 62″ x 70″ pattern combines a dinosaur central panel with coordinating frames, border and tonal prints to create a prehistoric masterpiece. Your ‘Dinosaur World’ quilt makes a great gift for ‘Jurassic’ fans of all ages!
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.
