Creative Nudge – A New Kind of Color

Posted on February 27, 2019 by Luana

Modern Quilters are forging a new path with colors that dazzle and delight. Yes there are the Modern quilts in two-color solids that make minimalist statements, but the quilts that really grabbed our attention at QuiltCon were the ones that went all-out with experiments of COLOR.

It seems that the most daring explorations of chroma are found in the Group Quilt category, where a palette is set and individuals have their own private color excursions, then somehow all of these personal visions are joined together and bound into one bold statement.

Here are 2 examples, along with a couple photos I took in Nashville on a rainy night on the neon Honky Tonk street.

The top right corner is the Best of Show winning quilt, made by By Leanne Chahley of the Lethbridge MQG in Edmonton Canada. Also pieced by Stephanie Ruyle, Felicity Ronaghan, Kari Vojtechovsky, Melissa Ritchie, Diane Stanley, Marci Debetaz, Debbie Jeske, Karen Foster, Hillary Goodwin

The bottom left quilt was the 2nd place winner in the Group Quilts category. Pieced and quilted by Tanya Munro, Yulia Reshetnikova, Marina Lukovneva, Maria Ismangalieva, Elvira Pustovalova, Olga Repina, Olga Stang, Marina Sokhonchuk, Maria Dzreeva, Evgeniya Milyaeva, Clara Stoikow, Olga Vovchenko, Anna Zhuravleva, Valeria Mezhibovskaya, Marina Surmillo, Elena Smolkina…from Dubna, in the Moscow region of Russia.

When we look at these quilts, we don’t think about Solids. We think about the glorious interplay of hues. However these colors were very carefully chosen from a larger Color Palette of Solids.

Start your own Color Adventure with our huge selection of Solid Colors – over 400 colors in stock now – plus color charts and a wide selection of Pre-Cuts. Our eQuilter Color Palette has a carefully curated selection of contemporary blenders for the creative quilter.

You can see photos from QuiltCon, and other recent quilt festivals, on my photo page. Enjoy!

sharing your Passion for Fabric…
Luana and Paul

eQuilter Classroom & Travel Calendar:
Mar 14-17 – Carter Center in Atlanta
Mar 28-30 – ‘Love Your Mother’ exhibit at Spring Quilt Festival in Chicago
Apr 1 – Quilting Arts TV, Cleveland
Apr 12-14 – Jean Wells for FRCQ workshop – in eQuilter Classroom
Apr 23-29 – Nantes France (lecture Fri 4/26)
June 27-30 – Jane Tenorio-Coscarelli workshop – eQuilter Classroom
July 11-14, 2019 – Cindy Lohbeck – Shibori, Ice-Dyeing and Ombre Dyeing Workshops @ eQuilter – REGISTRATION NOW OPEN



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Free eQuilter Pattern – Love of Dogs

Posted on February 26, 2019 by Luana

Big Dogs & Little Dogs, Fuzzy Dogs & Sleek Dogs, Working Dogs & Lap Dogs,
we love them ALL!

This week’s Free Quilt Pattern is for serious dog lovers, featuring the colorful artwork of Dan Morris who is one of our favorite designers.

You’ll fussy cut Dan’s panel into a collection of blocks featuring many different breeds, then piece together this quilt using his coordinates from the “Must Love Dogs” collection. Add an engineered border with the coordinating stripe, and you have a 52″ x 62″ quilt that will bring a smile to any true dog lover’s face. Woof!

… featuring the ‘Must Love Dogs’ collection by Dan Morris for Quilting Treasures.

Don’t miss the popular ‘Morningmoon Unicorns‘ and ‘Northern Lights Shimmer‘ 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.

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QuiltCon in Nashville

Posted on February 25, 2019 by Luana

This morning I caught a 6 am flight home from Nashville, after attending the Award Ceremonies and 2 days of QuiltCon. The weather was drizzly and cold but the colorful quilts and enthusiastic high spirits made up for the weather outside! Each year that I go to this event, I delight in seeing how the Modern Quilt movement, and this event, continue to change and grow…often in unexpected ways.

The Best of Show was a colorful and truly fantastic GROUP QUILT, which just underlines my theory that if quilters ruled the world we could solve all of our problems. This genius quilt is a study in how to bring creatively independent spontaneous elements together into one harmonious joyful expression. Congratulations to Leanne Lethbridge and her group!

One of the other top awards was the eQuilter Machine Quilting Award made by Marge Tucker from Massachusetts. My BERNINA Ambassador mentor Jeanne and I had fun admiring Marge’s machine work together. There was a lot of Kantha-style handwork and stitching at the exhibit, but there was also a lot of masterful machine quilting which filled up the ubiquitous Negative Spaces in many Modern Quilts.

One of my favorite quilts in the show was a multicolor Group Quilt from Russia, which had a similar feel to the Best of Show quilt. You may recall several years ago I talked about Group Quilts being a strong trend, after a particularly inspiring Group Quilt exhibit at the Birmingham UK Festival of Quilts. The Charity Guild Group Quilts which are sent in to QuiltCon from all over the US, and indeed from all over the world, are a case in point. Now more than ever, we need to come together to create beautiful synchronicity.

You may also recall me mentioning a year ago about the activist quilts by the Social Justice Sewing Academy. This year their quilts in the Youth category were the talk of the show, and I was lucky enough to spend some time with their organizers. I’ll be sharing photos from the Mexico City quilt festival and QuiltCon on my photo page this weekend.

Now I need to go get ready for Lynn Koolish‘s CQC workshop in our eQuilter Classroom tomorrow morning. Hope to see some of you there!

sharing your Passion for Fabric…
Luana and Paul

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QuiltCon in Nashville

Posted on February 23, 2019 by Luana

This morning I caught a 6 am flight home from Nashville, after attending the Award Ceremonies and 2 days of QuiltCon. The weather was drizzly and cold but the colorful quilts and enthusiastic high spirits made up for the weather outside! Each year that I go to this event, I delight in seeing how the Modern Quilt movement, and this event, continue to change and grow…often in unexpected ways.

The Best of Show was a colorful and truly fantastic GROUP QUILT, which just underlines my theory that if quilters ruled the world we could solve all of our problems. This genius quilt is a study in how to bring creatively independent spontaneous elements together into one harmonious joyful expression. Congratulations to Leanne Lethbridge and her group!

One of the other top awards was the eQuilter Machine Quilting Award made by Marge Tucker from Massachusetts. My BERNINA Ambassador mentor Jeanne and I had fun admiring Marge’s machine work together. There was a lot of Kantha-style handwork and stitching at the exhibit, but there was also a lot of masterful machine quilting which filled up the ubiquitous Negative Spaces in many Modern Quilts.

One of my favorite quilts in the show was a multicolor Group Quilt from Russia, which had a similar feel to the Best of Show quilt. You may recall several years ago I talked about Group Quilts being a strong trend, after a particularly inspiring Group Quilt exhibit at the Birmingham UK Festival of Quilts. The Charity Guild Group Quilts which are sent in to QuiltCon from all over the US, and indeed from all over the world, are a case in point. Now more than ever, we need to come together to create beautiful synchronicity.

You may also recall me mentioning a year ago about the activist quilts by the Social Justice Sewing Academy. This year their quilts in the Youth category were the talk of the show, and I was lucky enough to spend some time with their organizers. I’ll be sharing photos from the Mexico City quilt festival and QuiltCon on my photo page this weekend.

Now I need to go get ready for Lynn Koolish‘s CQC workshop in our eQuilter Classroom tomorrow morning. Hope to see some of you there!

sharing your Passion for Fabric…
Luana and Paul

********

eQuilter Classroom & Travel Calendar:
Feb 24 – Lynn Koolish for CQC – in eQuilter Classroom
Mar 9 – Charity Sewing Day – Please RSVP
Mar 14-17 – Carter Center – Atlanta
Mar 28-30 – ‘Love Your Mother‘ exhibit at Spring Quilt Festival in Chicago
Apr 1 – Quilting Arts TV, Cleveland
Apr 12-14 – Jean Wells for FRCQ workshop – in eQuilter Classroom
Apr 22-29 – Pour Lamour Du Fil – Nantes France (lecture Fri Apr 26)

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Free eQuilter Pattern – Full Heart

Posted on February 22, 2019 by Luana

Everyone knows that Quilters have the biggest hearts, and here’s
our eQuilter Free Quilt Pattern so you can share your big heart with someone special.

With Mothers Day just around the corner, we are thinking this would be a great gift for a New Mother, a Grandmother, or someone who is just extra sweet and lovable!

This 60″ x 65″ quilt is a quick and easy project, using a Panel plus 3 coordinates: a painterly Rainbow Stripe, a solid Kona Black, and a Hearts print. The colorful panel is just bursting with Joy and Love, saying more can words could ever express.

… featuring the ‘Full Heart’ collection by Chong-A Hwang for Timeless Treasures.

Don’t miss the popular ‘Morningmoon Unicorns‘ and ‘Northern Lights Shimmer‘ 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.

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Creative Nudge – Mi Casa et Tu Casa

Posted on February 20, 2019 by Luana

Having just returned from the Mexico City Quilt Festival, I am enjoying the colors and culture of Mexico and Latino culture. The folk arts and crafts, the music, and food are such a deep rich well of creative inspiration. From Mariachis to Margaritas, and from Tacos to Tequila, a Mexican restaurant with a Mariachi show is a good place to start!

I have always appreciated the folk arts and textile arts of Mexico and Guatemala, and then there are design influences like Day of the Dead and Frida Kahlo. Lately other influences are creeping in, like Succulents and Cacti. The richness of these cultures are also expressed in the Colors of Cuba, which has a parallel but unique Spanish/Latino flavor.

As the quilt movement in Mexico progresses, it is fun to see how the local culture is expressed in their quilts. In the center of this collage is a detail from Sonia Flores Ruiz award-winning quilt, “Casa De Las Comadres”. Notice the Mexican yarn-dyed stripes, the 3-D braided hair, the paper-cut banners that read “Mi Casa” and “Tu Casa”. (The border collage is related fabrics we have in stock now.)

On my last day there, we had an embroidery class from an indigenous textile artist who rode 8 hours on a bus to come teach us her native folk art. She told us how traditionally they would raise the sheep, spin the wool yarn, and dye the yarn with natural plant and bug (cochineal red) colors. However the specialized sheep which their people have raised in the mountains for centuries, are dying off because of climate change. Now she has to take a bus that is 3 hours one way, to buy the wool to spin and dye the yarn.

I brought down 17 quilts made by our Charity Sewing Group, to donate to mothers and children at the Migrant House in Monterrey. This is a charitable organization that helps families escaping poverty and violence in Central America. Many thanks to the quilters who contributed time and quilts to this effort!

Tomorrow I am flying to Nashville for QuiltCon. Yes this schedule is crazy, but these 2 events are one week apart!

sharing your Passion for Fabric…
Luana and Paul

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Free eQuilter Pattern – Mountain Wilderness

Posted on February 19, 2019 by Luana

Enjoy a pristine Mountain Landscape in this week’s Free Quilt Pattern. Northcott’s scenic wilderness panel captures this glorious mountain landscape with soaring eagles and geese, and majestic mountains.

The focus panels are elegantly surrounded by Northcott’s famous Stonehenge textured coordinates, pieced in delicate diamonds with rustic hues.

You can use this 57″ x 70″ quilt as a Double-Snuggle Large Lap quilt, a small Bed Quilt, or a fantastic large wall-hanging! This would make a great gift for your family ski buffs and cabin friends!

… featuring the ‘Stonehenge Mountain Wilderness’ collection by Linda Ludovico for Northcott Fabrics.

Don’t miss the popular ‘Morningmoon Unicorns‘ and ‘Northern Lights Shimmer‘ 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.

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Quilters de Mexico Festival

Posted on February 18, 2019 by Luana

Today was the last day of the quilt festival in Mexico City, where I’ve been chaperoning the Love Your Mother exhibit at the Quilters de Mexico event. It is so exciting to see our quilt challenge hanging in a new venue, and to see how quilters in another country react to the message of these quilts. I spoke to the Mexican quilters today, about how the challenge works, and a little bit about the jurying process. We have one Mexican quilter in ‘Love Your Mother’ and I look forward to seeing the quilt movement continue to develop here.

Lea McComas’ ‘Wall’ is also being displayed at this event, and due to the timing of US events, it has been the spark for much conversation. She still has bricks coming in from both sides of the issue, so if you want to express your feelings about this topic, you can still make a brick. Both sides of the Wall are welcome!

One of my Japanese friends is here. I just saw her at the Tokyo show a few weeks ago, and we’ll be meeting at the QuiltCon event next weekend. It is such a special feeling to see quilter friends from other countries when attending these events. Today I visited the Diego Rivera murals with a Canadian quilter who lives in Mexico, and a Dutch quilter who lives in the Caribbean. It is so fascinating compare our experiences of being quilters from different countries. For those who do not have a quilt shop locally, eQuilter is a lifeline!

I’ve uploaded photos of Love Your Mother in Mexico’ to my photo page, and will upload more from this event as the internet here allows. It is a little spotty. The world may be going crazy but quilting brings us together under the umbrella of love, creativity and generosity, and I am going to stay under this colorful umbrella.

sharing your Passion for Fabric…
Luana and Paul

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Free eQuilter Pattern – Morningmoon Unicorns

Posted on February 15, 2019 by Luana

Spring fairies and unicorns grace this week’s Exclusive Free Quilt Pattern. Jody Bergsma’s magical illustrations are delicately framed with lavender and sapphire borders, then joined with powder blue sashing and graceful corner stars.

We’ve combined Jody’s panels and coordinates with Northcott Stonehenge Gradations and Hoffman Hand Dyes to create a calming and enchanting color story.

This 57″ x 63″ Quilt will cover someone with a special kind of magic as a lap quilt or youth-sized coverlet. You can also invite these gorgeous mythical creatures into your home as a stunning wall-hanging.

… featuring the ‘Morningmoon Unicorns’ collection by Jody Bergsma for Robert Kaufman Fabrics.

Don’t miss the popular ‘Call of the Wild Bighorn‘ and ‘Moonlight Plume‘ 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.

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Creative Nudge – Valentine Love

Posted on February 13, 2019 by Luana

On Valentine’s Day, almost everyone wishes for someone to Love. Whether it is a sweetheart, a crush, or puppy love…the only thing better than receiving a Valentine, is giving one!

Sophie has been complaining for the last week about the PDAs (Public Displays of Affection) that clog the hallways of her high school on Valentine’s Day. What would we do without our kids to de-mystify all these abbreviations and acronyms? Silly me, I was still thinking a PDA was a Personal Digital Assistant. (Remember the Palm Pilots?)

As I travel the world to photograph quilt exhibits, it is obvious that more artists are becoming activists and putting their messages about peace, love, and the environment, in their quilts and textile art. Above is a central detail shot of a charming quilt from the Tokyo Quilt Festival, showing children from around the world sailing away together in a hot air balloon that looks like the Earth. Click through to my photo page to see the rest of the quilt.

The quilt detail is set in a frame of Heart and Valentine themed fabrics we have in stock now.

Thursday I am flying to Mexico City for the quilt festival, to host the Love Your Mother exhibit there. You may have seen that Quilts Inc also featured a Love Your Mother gallery on their website this week.

Consider this your Valentine, from me to you.
Wishing you Hearts and Flowers and Chocolate and LOVE on Valentine’s Day!

sharing your Passion for Fabric…
Luana and Paul

****************

eQuilter Classroom & Travel Calendar:
Feb 14-16 – ‘Love Your Mother’ exhibit at Mexico Quilt Festival in Mexico City
Feb 20-23 – QuiltCon – Nashville TN
Feb 24 – Lynn Koolish for CQC – in eQuilter Classroom
Mar 28-30 – ‘Love Your Mother’ exhibit at Spring Quilt Festival in Chicago
Apr 1 – Quilting Arts TV, Cleveland
Apr 12-14 – Jean Wells for FRCQ workshop – in eQuilter Classroom
June 27-30 – Jane Tenorio-Coscarelli workshop – eQuilter Classroom
July 11-14, 2019 – Cindy Lohbeck – Shibori, Ice-Dyeing and Ombre Dyeing Workshops @ eQuilter – REGISTRATION NOW OPEN

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