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 am writing to you from the Black Forest, NE of Colorado Springs. Sophie and I are at the CQC Fall Retreat in the woods, and today we were at the one-day workshop with Barbara Beasley, who also lives in Boulder Colorado. Barbara is famous for her fabric collage portraits of animals – particularly her Dogs and Cats.
This weekend we got a detailed lesson on making realistic eyes. In any kind of portrait, the more striking the eyes, the more the personality of the subject (whether human or animal) will jump out at you.
We have just confirmed that MJ Kinman is coming in early March to teach another fantastic class in the eQuilter classroom. This time we’ve asked her to teach a more advanced gemstone piecing class, and in fact we are collaborating on a design idea that will be exclusive to eQuilter! Please mark these dates on your calendar, and we will be opening registration soon.
Jacqueline de Jonge arrives from the Netherlands on Monday, and her workshop runs this week Tues through Thurs. We are excited that she is on her way and will be spreading her fine piecing magic here in Boulder.
Luana’s Travel Calendar:
Oct 16-22 – Winnipeg & Churchill, Manitoba Canada
Oct 25-31 – Quilt Market & Festival – Houston
Nov 13-17 – Color Marketing Group – Tuscon AZ
Jan 24-29, 2020 – Tokyo Quilt Festival
Feb 19-22 – QuiltCon – Austin TX
Using our Pattern Designer, you can put several colors in your Wish List and try out several combinations to design your own unique version of this fantastic quilt!
Browse our huge selection of Ombre color palettes for the coordinates and HAVE FUN playing around with our exclusive Pattern Designer.
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 last weekend Sophie and I drove 5 hours down to the Southeast corner of Colorado, to visit the new Wild Animal Refuge. This is the expansion of the Wild Animal Sanctuary, which I wrote about in the Saturday newsletter. The Lions, Tigers and Bears are living in such large acreage ‘enclosures’ that we didn’t see them at the new refuge. (Total 9700 acres)
However we did have a very close encounter with a large mob of slightly feral rescued alpacas! Actually they were quite sweet. They were very curious, and clustered around us to check us out. Some of them even gave us fuzzy Alpaca kisses!
We drove down through La Junta, and drove back up through Las Animas, and had some fantastic authentic Mexican food in both towns. On the five hour drive back home, we saw several herds of Pronghorn Antelope in the prairie grass which was very exciting for me. I haven’t seen Pronghorn out on the plains since I was a kid.
This coming weekend Sophie and I are going to a quilt retreat in the Black Forest just outside of Colorado Springs, and we’ll attend Barbara Beasley’s Animal Portrait workshop. I have been trying to get Sophie to give animal portraits a try, so I am hoping this will give her a boost of confidence. We did this CQC Fall Retreat several years ago and she learned how to do Hawaiian Applique. We sure have fun on our Mother-Daughter road trips!
I am working on a couple really big projects which I will be announcing soon. Since I organized the Love Your Mother quilt challenge and exhibit last year, some wonderful new opportunities have come along. You will hear about them here first!
We are buzzing with excitement as we prepare for Jacqueline de Jonge to arrive from the Netherlands. This time next week we’ll be in the middle of her 3-day workshop. Then a week later I’ll be on my way up to Winnipeg and Churchill to photograph the Polar Bears!
Luana’s Travel Calendar: Oct 16-22 – Winnipeg & Churchill, Manitoba Canada Oct 25-31 – Quilt Market & Festival – Houston Nov 13-17 – Color Marketing Group – Tuscon AZ Jan 24-29, 2020 – Tokyo Quilt Festival – 1 day with Lisa Walton’s Japan Tour Feb 19-22 – QuiltCon in Austin TX
Some of our most treasured memories recall those peaceful moments when we watch the sun setting over the ocean, with all the colors of the clouds and sky reflected in the jeweltones of the water.
Wherever you hang this 39″ x 50″ scenic quilt, it will bring back those calming moments as you pause to watch the sun slip below the horizon, listening to the lapping of the waves at your feet…
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 59″ x 65″ quilt design makes a beautiful Lap/Nap quilt, or hang it on the wall to bring that sense of harmony to any space. You’ll combine this beautiful digital panel with a starry print and 3 Hoffman Hand-Dyes in pieced borders that resemble rippling ocean waves.
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 week was a major milestone for our company and our staff – it has been ONE YEAR since we moved into our brand new building! You may recall that we bought the land, designed and built the building, and here we are one year later…the trees and grass are growing, and we are absolutely loving our new location. Many of you have visited for tours and workshops, and we are delighted to share our new digs with you.
Today I am writing to you from our classroom, as we host our Charity Sewing Group. This morning we had a presentation by a group of students from the University of Colorado (Boulder) chapter of Engineers Without Borders. They came to show us a video and photos of their volunteer trip to Nepal this summer, to help install clean water systems in remote mountain villages. They carried our donated comfort quilts to these communities that are inaccessible by jeep (i.e. they backpacked the quilts in for the last part of the journey) and the quilts were presented to those in the village who has the greatest need. Many thanks to EWB – CU!
This week we also hosted a group of licensed artists, many of whom have their artwork printed on fabric which we stock. These artists have had a long road to success, and every story about becoming a licensed designer is different.
I am constantly being asked “How can I become a fabric designer” – to which there is no simple answer and no secret to overnight success. However the quilt industry is putting on a program to help newbies find a way to get a foot in the door – it’s called Threads of Success and this seminar is being held concurrent with Quilt Market Oct 25-28 in Houston. I’ll be mentoring a group of 10 fabric designer wannabes, so if you are interested, you can request to be in my group on Monday.
Tonight Sophie and I are driving down to Southeast Colorado – about a 5 hour drive – to the new Wild Animal Refuge. This is an expansion of the Wild Animal Sanctuary, which rescues captive lions tigers and bears from terrible conditions in garages, basements, trailers and roadside gas station zoos … from people who thought it would be a good idea to have a cub as a pet. Yikes!
eQuilter bought one acre of land for the refuge as part of our charity program, and so we are being invited to take a private tour of the 9000 acre refuge tomorrow as Founders. I will take photos because you are all part of this rescue effort, along with all the other donations that are funded by your eQuilter purchases.
Luana’s Travel Calendar:
Oct 16-22 – Winnipeg & Churchill, Manitoba Canada
Oct 25-31 – Quilt Market & Festival – Houston
Nov 13-17 – Color Marketing Group – Tuscon AZ
Jan 24-29, 2020 – Tokyo Quilt Festival
Consider using metallic threads to give this additional shimmer. It’s like having a jewel box on your wall, full of sapphires, emeralds, rubies, amethyst, and topaz hues.
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.
There’s a lot going on in the news these days, but I bet many of you were shocked by the report from the Cornell Ornithology Lab that nearly 3 billion birds have disappeared from North America in the last 50 years. More than 90% of the losses (more than 2.5 billion birds) come from just 12 families including the sparrows, blackbirds, warblers, and finches. Even the beloved Red-winged Blackbird has declined by 92 million birds.
I know that our customers care, because you buy so many bird fabrics. We have responded by offering more and more bird prints…so many that we’ve had to split them into 3 categories. (Raptors, Songbirds and Tropical) There are even more birds in the Arctic and Christmas categories.
While I was in the Cotswolds last month (after the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham UK) I spent a couple days out in the English countryside…it was so quiet that I could hear 2 distinctly different streams on the hill beyond my room (one lower pitch, one higher pitch) and I could hear the sheep baaing throughout the night out in the meadows. What really struck me is the variety of birdsong all around me, in the hedgerows, the hillsides, the meadows and the forest. And yet…it was quieter than what I’ve remembered from previous years. There were fewer voices singing.
In my own backyard I’ve noticed fewer birds over the years. Fewer nests, fewer raptors in the skies, fewer robins and bluejays, fewer migrating birds, and no hummingbirds. We do not use toxic pesticides or herbicides around our house, or on our eQuilter property, to protect the birds, the bees, the wildlife, and the people who share these outdoor spaces.
I have friends who are avid birders, who have joined local Audubon clubs, who rush to wetlands and grasslands to catch a glimpse of a rare bird in transit. A bird is a miracle…lifted by gossamer feathers to fly over our heads, leaving us to dream of what it must be to have that kind of freedom.
The beautiful quilt above is by Roxanne Nelson, titled “Technicolor Dream Parrot”. I photographed this Batik quilt at the Quilt Canada Festival in Ottawa in June. I’ve set the quilt in a collage of bird fabrics that we have in stock now. Roxanne has really captured the dazzling plumage of this tropical bird. Trapping wild parrots for the pet trade, has diminished wild populations, with parrots being subjected to more exploitation than any other group of birds.
This week I am making an extra special donation to the Cornell Ornithology Lab to support their important research on bird populations, and so as you buy from our collections of birds, we will support those who have educated us about this staggering loss.
Luana’s Travel Calendar:
Oct 16-22 – Winnipeg & Churchill, Manitoba Canada
Oct 25-31 – Quilt Market & Festival – Houston
Nov 13-17 – Color Marketing Group – Tuscon AZ
Jan 24-29, 2020 – Tokyo Quilt Festival – 1 day with Lisa Walton’s Japan Tour
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.
