Fleeting Beauty

When we make a quilt – whether a bed quilt or an art quilt – we usually are aiming for a finished work that will last for a long time. Often we hope that the quilt will be around after we are gone. Often those quilts are also an expression of Beauty that captures a moment in time:

So many things in the natural world are of a fleeting nature, and whether you are a quilter, a painter or a photographer, you have probably gasped with delight at the fleeting beauty of sunsets, rainbows, flowers and butterflies. Often we drop whatever we are doing to fully appreciate those moments of transitory wonder. Perhaps we recognize that we are glimpsing divine perfection if only for minutes or seconds.

We have seen a lot of Butterfly fabrics over the years, but with the advancement of digital printing technology, these jewel-tone detailed fabrics are some of the most breathtaking designs created in the last few years. These fabrics capture those magical moments, and remind us of the impermanent nature of our existence.

When we see your orders come through the cutting department, full of sunsets, rainbows, flowers and butterflies…we smile and admire how you have combined the colors, the small and large scale designs, and imagine what beautiful quilt you will make from these fabrics.

Like the legendary Dragonfly that represents long life, may you live an expansive life full of joy and beauty, and may your quilts share your loving stitches for many years into the next generation.

sharing your Passion for Fabric…
Luana and Paul


eQuilter Classroom:
March 6-8 – MJ Kinman – “Unicorn Rainbow” & “Elizabeth DiamondGemstone Workshop
April 13-15 2020 – Susan Carlson – SOLD OUT
June 1-5 2020 – Paula Nadelstern – Kaleidoscopes & Quilts

Luana’s Travel Calendar:
Jan 24-29, 2020 – Tokyo Quilt Festival
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

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Free eQuilter Pattern – Sun Valley Dance

This week we bring you an exclusive eQuilter Free Quilt Pattern with one of our all-time most popular digital panels – the Dancing Kokopelli at Sunrise!

You will enjoy this flute-playing story teller from Southwest Native American cultures, representing the joyful spirit of Music. The earliest known petroglyph of Kokopelli dates to about 1000 AD!

The rich Southwest colors of Terra Cotta, Turquoise, Cactus Green are also found in the pottery and Navajo rug patterns of this 56″ x 75″ quilt design. The geometric stripe is used to make the clever border. The last time we had this panel in stock it blew out, so we want to make sure you have another chance to dance with Kokopelli now that he is back in stock.

Featuring the ‘Stonehenge – Sun Valley’ collection by Linda Ludovico for Northcott Fabrics.

Don’t miss the popular ‘Paisley Pups‘ and ‘Epic Owls‘ quilt patterns!

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.

Click Here for a Video Tutorial of the Free Pattern Designer.
Download Instructions for the pattern at the bottom of the pattern designer page.

Luana and Paul Rubin

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Free eQuilter Pattern – Night Blooms

As a deep purple twilight falls in the distance, this dramatic quilt design shows a colorful garden illuminated by the light from a window.

Your Free Quilt Pattern starts with a brilliant floral painting by artist Chong-A Hwang, then adds in 3 Hoffman Hand-Dyes and a Solid Kona Black, plus a coordinate floral for the border.

This 64″ x 71″ quilt design makes a beautiful windowpane wall hanging, or a stunning quilt coverlet for a youth or small bed. We love the sumptuous colorplay of complementary hues in this quilt…it is sure to bring gasps of admiration when displayed in your home!

Featuring the ‘Night Bloom’ collection by Chong-A Hwang for Timeless Treasures.

Don’t miss the popular ‘Dragon Fire‘ and ‘Epic Owls‘ quilt patterns!

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.

Click Here for a Video Tutorial of the Free Pattern Designer.
Download Instructions for the pattern at the bottom of the pattern designer page.

Luana and Paul Rubin

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Felting, Genealogy, Bob Ross and Tokyo

Many thanks to felting teacher Dawn Edwards and our new friends at the Handweavers Guild! After a rollicking good time with the felting fanatics in our classroom this week, I am tying up loose ends in preparation for our trip to Tokyo next week. This will be Sophie’s first trip to Japan and the quilt festival there. She will also be traveling to Birmingham with me in August, to help me set up and run the “Love Your Mother” quilt gallery at the Festival of Quilts. That will be about a week before she moves out to go to college!

I bet a lot of you are into genealogy, as I am. In fact last week I ordered a gorgeous 60″ square panel for eQuilter, with a tree that I think will be popular with those who quilt and work on family trees! Here is a 24″ x 44″ panel we have in stock now.

I finally broke down and sent for my DNA report. This morning I woke up to 2 emails from distant (4th) cousins, and realized that my DNA report was completed and posted. I have been continuing the work my mom was doing on our family tree. I like to connect my travels to my genealogy. I learned to sew (and be generally crafty and artistic) from my Swedish and German grandmas. My love of photography comes from my English-Irish-Scotch grandpa. Music runs through the whole family tree. It is cool to think about how these talents and interests will continue down the family tree from my ancestors, to my kids, and beyond…

We had a lovely visit this morning from Karla (Cherrywood Fabrics) as she was driving through on the way to Road to California. Karla is the amazing person who organizes the Cherrywood challenges that you may have seen in Houston. This last year it was the Bob Ross challenge. Prior challenges include Prince, Lion King and Wicked. Her next challenge theme is Princess Diana! If you go to R2CA be sure to stop and tell her hello, and check out the Bob Ross exhibit. Her husband wrote an essay on Wetlands in the new Endangered Species companion book. (My Polar Bear quilt is in there too.)

Some of our eQuilter customers from around the world have reached out and asked to meet up in Tokyo. If you’d like to meet up in at the quilt festival please do send us an email in the next couple days. We arrive the evening of Jan 25, and will be at the show for 3 days. I tend to be there at the beginning and end of the day, because it gets so crowded in the middle of the day. We are staying at the Tokyo Dome Hotel. And yes….I will be bringing back the 2 show books again. Let us know if you are interested and we will email you when I get back.

If you’d like to see photos from previous Tokyo Quilt Festivals or the Birmingham Festival of Quilts, check out my photo albums here.

sharing your Passion for Fabric…
Luana and Paul

See my Flickr Photo Pages for travel images, comment on our blog, or follow us on Facebook.

Visit Pinterest, eQuilter’s Instagramor Twitter for more Color and Design ideas.

eQuilter Classroom:
March 6-8 – MJ Kinman – “Unicorn Rainbow” & “Elizabeth Diamond” Gemstone Workshop
April 13-15 2020 – Susan Carlson
June 1-5 2020 – Paula Nadelstern – Kaleidoscopes & Quilts

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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Free eQuilter Pattern – Winter White Tiger

This week’s exclusive eQuilter Free Quilt Pattern is an ethereal White Tiger portrait that will take your breath away, set in a misty Winter landscape. Is this the ghost of Tigers Past or Future? This magnificent big cat strides across an alpine vista, framed in snowflake coordinates and a Hoffman Hand-Dye.

You will start with the central digital-printed Hoffman panel, then piece the border to make this 53″ x 70″ quilt design. Hang in a bedroom or use as a quilt coverlet for a small bed, and you’ll have mystical Tiger dreams at night!

Featuring the ‘Call of the Wild’ collection by Hoffman Fabrics.

Don’t miss the popular ‘Dragon Fire‘ and ‘Epic Owls‘ quilt patterns!

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.

Click Here for a Video Tutorial of the Free Pattern Designer.
Download Instructions for the pattern at the bottom of the pattern designer page.

Luana and Paul Rubin

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Hats and Pets

January 15 is National Hat Day, and it is splendidly serendipitous that we have a sculptural felt hat-making workshop with the Handweaver’s Guild in our classroom for the next 2 days. The teacher Dawn Edwards took a tour of our warehouse today, and we plucked the Summer issue of Fiber Art Now off the shelf…with a photo of her granddaughter modeling one of her fabulous hats. Gosh I just love when those things happen!

Some of you with excellent memories may remember a newsletter I sent out in April 2018, about visiting a sheep farm with Sophie. While we were there, we witnessed a lamb being born. The owner of the farm is also part of the Handweaver’s Guild here, and she’ll be bringing her wool to the class today I suppose. There is a lovely circular quality to our relationships with creative people, I have found.

For 15 years, before we started eQuilter, I was part of a weekly figure painting class. Every week I would take my easel and oil paints, and paint a portrait or figure from a live model in 3 hours. For many years my work in plein air, still life and portrait painting, taught me invaluable lessons about light, color, and design. Everything we have ever done in the Arts is there for us as we explore new ways to share our ideas visually. You never know where that next great inspiration will come from…perhaps the color of a child’s ice cream cone, reflected lights on rippling water, a tangle of color threads on our sewing room floor.

When you look at the world with an artist’s eye, you see things that others miss. Aren’t we lucky?

sharing your Passion for Fabric…
Luana and Paul

p.s. Yesterday was National Dress Up Your Pet Day, hence the Hats and Pets above. Please note: No animals were harmed in the making of this e-newsletter.

eQuilter Classroom:
Jan 15-16 – Dawn Edwards – Nuno Felt Hats
March 6-8 – MJ Kinman – “Unicorn Rainbow” & “Elizabeth DiamondGemstone Workshop
April 13-15 2020 – Susan Carlson – SOLD OUT
June 1-5 2020 – Paula Nadelstern – Kaleidoscopes & Quilts

Luana’s Travel Calendar:
Jan 24-29, 2020 – Tokyo Quilt Festival
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

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Free eQuilter Pattern – Wild Bird Sanctuary

Birdwatchers will love working with artist Kim Green’s playful portraits, in this week’s Free Quilt Pattern. These vibrant paintings are splashed with color in the main panel, and the 5 collection coordinates. The panel features 8 different birds: Penguins, Pelicans, Woodpeckers, Roadrunners, Canadian Geese, Turkeys, Pheasants and Quail.

This 44″ x 62″ quilt design is set with a Solid Black background so the colors really “pop”, showing off the Avian block vignettes, and sets of bouncing Flying Geese triangles. Snap this up for your favorite ornithophile, or to add a happy swish of saturated colors to your room!

Featuring the ‘Wild Birds’ collection by Kim Green of KG Art Studio for P&B Textiles.

Don’t miss the popular ‘Dragon Fire‘ and ‘Epic Owls‘ quilt patterns!

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.

Click Here for a Video Tutorial of the Free Pattern Designer.
Download Instructions for the pattern at the bottom of the pattern designer page.

Luana and Paul Rubin

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Free eQuilter Pattern – Stonehenge Haiku

Enter the Zen Garden of this Asian-themed collection in this week’s free quilt pattern. Hear the soft whisper of the Ginkgo leaves as they flutter gently to the ground, in this beautiful view of a Japanese grove.

You will use 5 different fabrics from the Haiku collection, in shades of Bamboo, Pine and Celadon Green. This 61″ x 80″ quilt makes a small bed quilt or a soothing wall hanging or room divider, perhaps for a meditation or sleeping space.

Featuring the ‘Stonehenge – Haiku’ collection by Deborah Edwards for Northcott Fabrics.

Don’t miss the popular ‘Dragon Fire‘ and ‘Wild Tiger Eyes‘ quilt patterns!

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.

Click Here for a Video Tutorial of the Free Pattern Designer.
Download Instructions for the pattern at the bottom of the pattern designer page.

Luana and Paul Rubin

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Time Flies

Message from Luana:

Sophie and I have been spending a lot of time together lately. This weekend we are in the warehouse processing orders (just like old times in the basement of our house!) because of our big yearend sale. This last week Sophie got her drivers license, after many hours of me in the passenger seat as she practiced with her driving permit. In a couple weeks she will be coming to the Tokyo Quilt Festival for the first time. She is preparing for her college auditions which will be February. She is graduating from high school in mid-May (the same weekend as Spring Market) and before we know it, she’ll be moving out of the house into a college dorm in August. So many of you have shared in our story of adopting Sophie and watching her grow up in our family business. Can you believe she is almost grown up and out of the house??

This week we are hosting the Boulder Handweavers Guild, and we will have a wool felting class happening in the classroom, making a sculptural felt hat. We are also happy to be hosting more classes for CQC and FRCQ (our state guild and regional art quilt guild) in 2020. Our beautiful new classroom is set up for sewing, painting, dyeing and general textile merry-making…and we are bringing in national teachers for more eQuilter workshops in the next several months. It is very exciting for us!

Our extra 9000 sq ft in our new warehouse has been rented out, and construction is starting for our new tenants. If you come to visit us in the next few months there will be lots of activity on the East side of the building.

I received an update from Kathy Price at Mission of Love about their projects for the next few months. She writes:


March 11; Mission of Love will be going to Tecpán, Guatemala to build a home for the orphans, place safe electricity and make addition for a disabled man and his family, and start a Maya Traditional School for language and weaving. Two Denton airlifts have been approved and just waiting for the Department of Defense to notify me that the C5 cargo planes will be available to deliver our Mission of Love humanitarian aid already inspected and ready to be transferred to the Youngstown, Ohio Air Base. 30,000 of corn also has been donated and will be given to the Maya in need of food. Continuous support will be given to the sick cancer children at the House of God, Guatemala City.

Doctor Rick Scheetz is planning to be well enough to lead a surgery team to continue our cleft lip / pallet surgeries in March at Metropolitan Hospital with Doctor Edgar Moran.

We have a Denton airlift going to the Mesquite Indians of Honduras, via Norma Love Foundation.  

In April we will be going to the Pine Ridge Native American Indian Reservation to build a home for Percy White Plume and his family.  We will be sending two 53 foot trailers of construction material and humanitarian aid also.  This aid will assist in furnishing a foster care home, directed and founded by Barbara Dull Knife.

So our year will once again be filled with lots of humanitarian aid being distributed to Honduras, Guatemala and Pine Ridge Native American Indian Reservation.  

God willing, all will be accomplished and the promises that were made will be fulfilled.  

With love and gratitude,

Kathy Price

Director, Mission of Love

eQuilter Classroom:
Jan 15-16 – Dawn Edwards – Nuno Felt Hats
March 6-8 – MJ Kinman – “Unicorn Rainbow” & “Elizabeth Diamond” Gemstone Workshop
April 13-15 2020 – Susan Carlson
June 1-5 2020 – Paula Nadelstern – Kaleidoscopes & Quilts

Luana’s Travel Calendar:

Jan 24-29, 2020 – Tokyo Quilt Festival – 1 day with Lisa Walton’s Japan Tour
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

Travel and Classroom Dates:

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Free eQuilter Pattern – Backyard Songbirds

Welcome to our Backyard Summer Fantasy!

These freshly washed quilts are flapping in the breeze, drying in the morning sun and attracting colorful songbirds from the nearby grove of trees. Don’t you wish you were here?

In this 51″ x 51″ exclusive eQuilter Free Quilt Pattern, we’ve combined Songbirds prints from Elizabeth Studio and Timeless Treasures, with 3 different Stonehenge textures from Northcott. You can almost hear the twittering of the birds, and the rustling of the leaves.

This cheerful quilt design is sure to bring a smile on a rainy day. These bright fabrics are fun to sew with, while we are waiting for the first signs of Spring. Enjoy!

… featuring the ‘Beautiful Birds’ collection by Tracy Lizotte for Elizabeth’s Studio, and ‘Birds On Quilts‘ by Timeless Treasures.

Don’t miss the popular ‘Dragon Fire‘ and ‘Wild Tiger Eyes‘ quilt patterns!

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.

Click Here for a Video Tutorial of the Free Pattern Designer.
Download Instructions for the pattern at the bottom of the pattern designer page.

Luana and Paul Rubin

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