This generous 60″ x 70″ quilt design uses the dreamy Digital-Printed ‘Sea Serenade’ collection, with a gorgeous range of liquid colors that will bring a sense of peaceful magic to any space. The mermaid silhouettes float on contrasting backgrounds, giving the effect of a backlit figure suspended in the ocean.
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’ve been going through a few dozen boxes of family possessions from my mom’s old house, and my grandparents house. As Mom has aged and declined, she has moved to smaller spaces with simpler possessions. I’ve taken on the artwork, the photos, the collected treasures of their lifetimes. This week I finally had to go through everything and make some hard decisions.
This collage above is about the story of my grandma Merle Swanson who was born in Thurston Nebraska. In the family photo, she is the serious kid on the bottom right, with the big bow in her hair. Her mom emigrated from Sweden to Ellis Island in 1880, and died when Merle was one. Her dad married her mom’s sister, they had a couple more babies, then her aunt/step-mom died also. The dad collapsed in grief and the kids were scattered to various relatives.
Merle had a dreamy romance with my grandpa John in Southern California. They would park to watch the sun set over the ocean, and sing duets. They had 2 kids (my mom & uncle) and then moved to Oregon during WWII. There were family holidays at the Oregon Coast and Mount Hood, and later John got a Silver Airstream trailer and they drove all over the West. He was the owner of a fleet of school busses but his hobby was photography.
Merle’s hobbies were ceramic painting, crewel embroidery, and garment sewing. She also had fruit trees and an organic garden and they were vegetarians – ahead of their time in the 50s! I’ve been unpacking and admiring her ceramic paintings this week. My grandpa’s mom was a California impressionist painter in the early 20th century, so I know Grandpa encouraged and supported Grandma’s artistic talents, just as Paul has supported mine. (Paul’s mom was an expressionist painter.)
Everybody in the family was a musician. Grandpa played saxophone, Grandma played piano, my mom played piano, her brother played violin, and everybody sang. Is it any surprise that everyone in our family is also a musician?
So as I dig through files, photos, trinkets and letters…I struggle between not wanting to miss a treasure…and needing to get the job done. I just share this because I know many of you can relate, and those family memories are so precious. Tonight I am going back to the tree I am building on Ancestry, to check dates and think about how these gifts are passed down to us, often from so many generations back that we can’t know where the original seed of creativity was planted. But I can imagine…making a dreary utilitarian item and wanting to make it special and beautiful. How far we’ve come, and yet how things have not changed….
sharing your Passion for Fabric… Luana and Paul
**************** Luana’s Travel Calendar: July 18-22 – Sacred Threads & Not Fade Away (VA & DC) July 30 – Aug 6 – Birmingham UK – Festival of Quilts
eQuilter Classroom: July 11-14, 2019 – Cindy Lohbeck – Shibori, Ice-Dyeing and Ombre Dyeing – Almost FULL Sept 13-15 – Cas Holmes – FRCQ Workshop Oct 8-10 – Jacqueline de Jonge – Enchanting Stars & Dream Flight April 13-15 2020 – Susan Carlson June 1-5 2020 – Paula Nadelstern
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Posted inCreativity, Museum, Music|Comments Off on Creative Nudge – An American Story
You know that the holiday season will be here before we know it, so just imagine this stunning wall hanging on your wall on Christmas Eve. This week’s Free Quilt Pattern features a finely detailed digital-printed panel with a beautiful painting of the Holy Night scene. Baby Jesus is lying in a humble manger, with Mary and Joseph, and the Star shining above.
This 54″ x 46″ quilt design starts with an exquisite jewel-tone panel, adds 2 coordinating Star prints, plus 2 Hoffman Hand-Dyes. The panel includes the Nativity scene with the gentle lambs, the Wise Men, the Angels and the Star of Bethlehem.
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.
We are very excited to have Cindy Lohbeck
teaching Four 1-Day Dyeing classes this week! Cindy and I met at the
Quilting Arts TV studio about a year and a half ago, and we’ve been
planning these classes since then!
We do have a couple seats left in her INDIGO Shibori classes
on July 11 and 12, so if you can snag those last seats, I know you’ll
have fun making this gorgeous form of Japanese tie-dyeing!
Sophie and I will both be in the classes, and if you’ve signed up
for any of these classes, we’ve sent you an invite for a special Sip ‘n
Dip party on Weds night. Be sure to RSVP ASAP so we have enough wine and
chocolate!
Sophie is coming with me the following week, to the Sacred Threads
opening, and the Not Fade Away and SAQA events July 19 and 20. We are a
longtime sponsor of this event, and I have a quilt in this exhibit, so
we are triple-excited to be seeing the quilts and all of you attending
in 2 weeks. If you live in the DC area and can attend, we encourage you
to sign up now for the Sacred Threads Experience Weekend!
Jacqueline de Jonge‘s
workshop registration is going live next week, and those of you on the
waitlist will receive notification first. My goodness Jacqueline has
quite the international fan club!
We have friends and family in So Cal, and so we are happy to read
that there are so far no fatalities in the earthquakes over the last
couple days. My family left Hermosa Beach in 1968 to move to Colorado,
but I remember several earthquakes while we lived there. I was in a few
big quakes in Taiwan in my 20s, which I remember vividly. So I know
those of you in So Cal and Nevada had a big scare!
sharing your Passion for Fabric…
Luana and Paul
*****
Check out our 180 videos from international quilt festivals, PBS TV, artist and curator interviews on our eQuilter Video Page. Subscribe and catch the latest videos on our eQuilter YouTube Channel.
********
Luana’s Travel Calendar:
July 18-22 – Sacred Threads & Not Fade Away (VA & DC)
July 30 – Aug 6 – Birmingham UK – Festival of Quilts
Christmas is a time to share our love with our beloved family members, including our Fur Babies! When the family gathers around the Christmas Tree and the holiday table, our pets are sure to be close by…or right in the middle of everything!
To make this 63″ x 57″ quilt, you’ll start with our exclusive digital panel, cut up the blocks and piece with 3 Hoffman Hand-Dyes, and add the Cat-i-Tude stripe for the border. This makes a great gift for an Animal-Lover, or perhaps you’ll hang it in your living room for your own holiday celebration!
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.
As we pause for our Independence Day on the Fourth of July, I am thinking about the topics and motifs that are so quintessentially American. So many of these are expressed through our fabric collections, but where to begin? The lighthouses in New England? The Redwoods in California? The Grand Canyon, Monument Valley or Yellowstone? The Native American Pueblos of the Southwest? Or maybe you think of the great museums of New York City, or the Smithsonian in Washington DC?
We live in such a huge country, so that travel is necessary to experience all this beautiful land has to offer. Skiing in Colorado, surfing in Hawaii, fly-fishing in Montana, whale-watching in Alaska, or snorkeling in Key Largo…we hop on plans, trains and automobiles to have these unique experiences.
Then there are the classic things that we bake and eat and drink on the 4th of July….Lemonade, Cherry Pie, Watermelon. We gather together and spread out our blankets (or quilts!) on the grass, lay out a picnic, and then wait for the cool darkness and the thundering Fireworks.
I lived in New York City from 1984 to 1990, and during those years I went to the top of the Empire State Building, the World Trade Center, and the Crown of the Statue of Liberty. Peering out from her crown to Ellis Island, I imagined my ancestors arriving there after a long ocean voyage.
In 1986 I went to the huge fireworks celebration for the Centennial of the Statue of Liberty. It was so beautiful – I will never forget the colors exploding over Liberty Island, the bursting lights reflecting on the water. For me, she is the most iconic symbol of being an American.
If you have signed up for one or more of Cindy Lohbeck‘s dyeing/shibori classes, you should have received an invitation to a party the night before the classes start. Please RSVP ASAP!
The Tokyo Quilt Festival is welcoming Western quilters to submit quilts to their exhibit, to be held in January 23-29, 2020. The deadline for submissions to be received is Sept 30.
sharing your Passion for Fabric… Luana and Paul
**************** Luana’s Travel Calendar: July 18-22 – Sacred Threads & Not Fade Away (VA & DC) July 30 – Aug 6 – Birmingham UK – Festival of Quilts
eQuilter Classroom: July 11-14, 2019 – Cindy Lohbeck – Shibori, Ice-Dyeing and Ombre Dyeing – A couple seats still open – sign up now! Sept 13-15 – Cas Holmes – FRCQ Workshop Oct 8-10 – Jacqueline de Jonge – Enchanting Stars & Dream Flight April 13-15 2020 – Susan Carlson June 1-5 2020 – Paula Nadelstern
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Posted inClasses, Travel|Comments Off on American Life
This time last year I
was in the forests of Northern Sweden, as a chaperone with Sophie’s Swedish
Fiddle & Folk Music tour. This last week over the Solstice, I kept having
flashbacks to the land of my mother’s ancestors…the traditional red houses
and barns with crisp white trim…the costumes of the musicians at the folk
music festivals…so much color and design to inspire those of us who love to
sew. So here is an encore of images
from those long Midsummer days where the sun goes down at 11:30 and rises
at 3 am!
I have a very long connection with Paris and Notre Dame, have visited there
several times, starting in the late 80s. Last week Sophie and I went to see the
Leonardo da Vinci exhibit at the Denver Nature & Science Museum, and the
last section was a deep analysis of the Mona Lisa. The first time I saw Notre
Dame was also the first time I visited the Louvre and saw the Mona Lisa. In
those days she was in a small dark room and you could walk right up to her. I
feel very lucky to have had such an intimate experience with her, compared to
the madness of the huge crowd in front of the Mona Lisa these days.
Did you know that the Mona Lisa is unfinished? Did you know that Leonardo
carried the Mona Lisa with him and continued to work on her from 1503 to 1517?
Talk about a heckuva UFO! Also through a series of tests, researchers have
determined that da Vinci repainted and redesigned elements of the painting
several times.
So…even the great master had parallels to common quilter practices. We carry
handwork, rip up and re-do, and struggle with UFOs. What is YOUR latest
masterpiece?
sharing your Passion for Fabric…
Luana and Paul
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Posted inArt, Travel|Comments Off on Making a Masterpiece
This glowing quilt design has a mysterious quality, setting pieces of a digital-printed double border floral on a black background. Glowing gradient strips are pieced into the floral border. The 60″ x 68″ quilt design could be a generous Lap Quilt, a small coverlet quilt, or a dramatic wall hanging.
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.
I have posted several photos from Quilt Canada on my photo page – feel free to share!
This week I am featuring another wildlife quilt from Quilt Canada. The center image in this collage is a quilt with a Mountain Lion (Cougar) by Georgia Andrews, named “Vantage Point”. This quilt was quite striking because of the face-to-face image of the mountain lion, with detailed eyes and a great use of value contrast.
I’ve included some other Cougar and North Woods prints in the collage. This time of year in the Rocky Mountains we see lots of wildlife not only in the mountains, but also in our communities that adjoin open space. Yesterday there was a Bobcat jumping on roofs in the middle of the night in a neighborhood a few blocks away from us. My brother and his family drove through the Wyoming and Colorado Rockies on their way to visit us, and during their trip they saw Moose, Elk, Black Bears, a Grizzly Bear, Wolves and Bison. That was really exciting for their twin 10 year old boys!
The Tokyo Quilt Festival is welcoming Western quilters to submit quilts to their quilt exhibit, to be held in late January 2020. Take a look at our Facebook posting, read the submission requirements, and consider if you might have a quilt to submit to this prestigious show.
We have an immediate opening for a Customer Service full time position – do you know anyone in the Boulder County area who might like to join us?
sharing your Passion for Fabric… Luana and Paul
**************** Luana’s Travel Calendar: July 18-22 – Sacred Threads & Not Fade Away (VA & DC) July 30 – Aug 6 – Birmingham UK – Festival of Quilts
eQuilter Classroom: July 11-14, 2019 – Cindy Lohbeck – Shibori, Ice-Dyeing and Ombre Dyeing – Almost FULL Sept 13-15 – Cas Holmes – FRCQ Workshop Oct 8-10 – Jacqueline de Jonge – Enchanting Stars & Dream Flight April 13-15 2020 – Susan Carlson June 1-5 2020 – Paula Nadelstern
This week’s Free Quilt Pattern is based on the juicy paintings by Marcia Baldwin, depicting horses with flowing manes, illuminated by sunlight. The pieced border uses coordinates from the collection, with Dreamcatcher Ponies, and beautiful abstract brushstroke blenders.
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.
