eQuilter Blog

This weekend I was in Athens Ohio, at the opening of “Quilt National 2025” at the Dairy Barn Art Center. 84 quilts were juried from 659 submissions and 370 artists.

It is a prestigious textile art show that attracts submissions from all over the world. I’d like to share this art quilt by South Korean artist Jungeun Tark.

“Tea-Bowl of Mama” gives the illusion of a 3-dimensional vessel using light and dark values. There is a feeling of peaceful quiet beauty in this art quilt, and the flowing quality is supported by the freemotion stitching.

Artist Statement:
I wanted to express the aesthetics of a tea bowl with fiber. A quilt made with fiber makes a tea bowl with a cold and hard texture, look soft and emotional. Through countless layers of thread on a piece of fabric, I attempt to expand the realm of plastic art through a new attempt at fiber art that started from the sculptural form of ceramics. While I was working on this project, I remembered my mother. What was contained in the tea bowl was my mother’s love, like the morning sunlight.

Sharing our passion for fabric…..
Luana and Paul

* The wood panel backdrop is a digital-printed quilt backing from Rubin Design Studio.

Subscribe to my artist website.
www.luanarubin.com – New Blog Post about the Kyoto Quilt Festival!

Travel/Lecture Dates:
June 18-20 – Quilt Canada – Toronto Ontario
July 31 – Aug 3 – Festival of Quilts, Birmingham UK

Visit eQuilter’s Instagram, Pinterest or TikTok pages for Color and Design ideas.

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

Check out our Video pages for interviews and show reviews.

This weekend I am writing to you from Athens Ohio, as I attend Quilt National at the Dairy Barn.

Congratulations to Anne Smith from Wales in the UK, who won the International Artist Award sponsored by eQuilter.

This is one of the most competitive and prestigious shows in the world, so it is such a pleasure to be here at the opening with many of the artists in attendance. Art quilts come in from all over the US, and this year there were quilts from 23 other countries … a truly international exhibit!

It was obvious this year that many of the artist had thoughts and emotions to express in their work, about the state of the world. I reached out to several of these artists who are making art that is similarly inspired by the events and issues that are also inspiring/informing my own work.

Friday night was the award ceremony, and then the Dairy Barn hosted a dinner for the artists and sponsors. Today (Saturday) I went into the gallery before it opened to the public, to get photos of the quilts. Then we had a gallery walk where each of the artists in attendance, stood in front of their work and talked about their inspiration and process. I had already walked through the exhibit twice, but hearing the verbal artist statements was a deep plunge into the richness of each artist’s story.

I am not getting much sleep, but I am having lots of fun photographing the show and hanging out with artist friends. I’ll be posting photos and sharing them with you soon. Watch this space!

sharing your love for fabric,
Luana and Paul

Follow my artist blog here.

Travel/Lecture Dates:
May 23-26 – Quilt National – Dairy Barn, Athens OH
June 18-20 – Quilt Canada – Toronto Ontario

Visit eQuilter’s Instagram, Pinterest or TikTok pages for Color and Design ideas.

See Luana’s Artist Blog, Flickr Photo Pages for travel images, comment on our blog, or follow us on Facebook.

Check out our Video pages for interviews and show reviews.

This week I am excited to share that my art quilt “Invisible Borders” will be exhibited at the International Quilt Festival in Houston this October, in the debut of a new artist exhibit group:

Soul Stories: Threads of Existence

We are visionary art quilters, weaving the threads of ancient myths, archetypes, and cosmic energies to illuminate the sacred narratives of the human soul. Through our collaborative creations, we offer a portal to the mysteries that connect us all, inviting the world to journey with us through the divine tapestry of existence.

Our exhibit will travel to a museum and other venues in 2026, and beyond. I am honored to be part of this collaboration of 20 fiber artists.

On the top of the above collage, I have shown a detail of my piece “Invisible Borders”, which tells the story of what happens when a wolf family passes over the border of a National Park like Yellowstone, into unprotected territory. You can see the full piece on my Gallery Page.

In addition I will have a 2nd piece “250 Years of American Wilderness” in the Landscape category at Houston Quiltfest. It celebrates the history of our National Parks and public lands, and honors the park rangers and caretakers of these precious resources.

This quilt will travel to a Semi-Quincentennial museum exhibit in 2026. This is the 3rd Semi-Quin piece I have made for museum exhibits opening in July 2026, for our nation’s 250th birthday. You can see this also on my Gallery Page.

Hopefully you are also making your own historic Semi-Quin quilt to document this moment in our nation’s history. We have plenty of topics to potentially put in a quilt that will become part of history. What would you wish to document in such a quilt? Imagine for a moment…what would you like to express to viewers 50 years from now, at a 300th anniversary exhibit of historic quilts?

I have included a beautiful new Forest quilt backing, and 2 exclusive Wolf-themed panels, in the fabric collage above. We hope you like them!

Sharing our passion for fabric…..
Luana and Paul

Subscribe to my artist website.
www.luanarubin.com – New Blog Post about the Kyoto Quilt Festival!

Travel/Lecture Dates:
May 23-26 – Quilt National – Dairy Barn – Athens OH
June 18-20 – Quilt Canada – Toronto Ontario

Visit eQuilter’s Instagram, Pinterest or TikTok pages for Color and Design ideas.

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

Check out our Video pages for interviews and show reviews.

It is always good news when we get the notice that our quilts got into a show. I am very excited that I will have 2 quilts at Houston this fall. Right now I have 3 art quilt UFO’s in process in my studio, so that is how I will spend the first part of my summer…finishing up those pieces and starting a 4th piece that is already formed in my head. What are you working on now?

Today I attended a fundraiser luncheon for the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum in Golden. David Taylor was our comedic Master of Ceremonies, and it was his birthday too! The museum is expanding (amazing!) so we were there to support this success story.

I’ll have some fun news to share next week in my Wednesday Creative Nudge e-newsletter. In the meantime as the school year wraps up and we make plans for summer travel and celebrations, perhaps you too are starting to plan new projects with deadlines looming this Fall, or for the holidays.

sharing your love for fabric,
Luana and Paul

Follow my artist blog here.

Travel/Lecture Dates:
May 23-26 – Quilt National – Dairy Barn, Athens OH
June 18-20 – Quilt Canada – Toronto Ontario

Visit eQuilter’s Instagram, Pinterest or TikTok pages for Color and Design ideas.

See Luana’s Artist Blog, Flickr Photo Pages for travel images, comment on our blog, or follow us on Facebook.

Check out our Video pages for interviews and show reviews.

I am going to get a little bit personal in this email. Today is the 30th wedding anniversary for Paul and I. In case you don’t know, Paul and I are not only parents to 3 talented wonderful young adults, but we are also business partners in eQuilter. We married in May 1995, outdoors at Chautauqua Park with the Boulder Flatirons as a backdrop.

When you hit a round number it is worth sitting back for a moment and thinking about all that has happened, and what is to come. Paul and I met in 1994, and within 2 weeks we knew we were going to get married and have a family. We were looking really hard for each other, and when we finally met, that was it. We bonded over our mutual love of Star Trek, Monty Python, and the 4 cats we had between our 2 households. (Today we have 2 dogs, and 3 rescue cats.)

In the late 90s Paul was managing an audio company, learning code and starting to design websites. In fact he constructed the Boulder Philharmonic website and maintained it for a few years back then, which nobody at the Phil remembers after all these years.

I left the fashion industry and New York City, moving back to Colorado in 1990. I was always thinking about what I could do next – involving art, color, design, and fabric. A year later I was looking at magazines in my local supermarket, when I stumbled across the quilt magazines. I immediately recognized that this was what I had been looking for!

When I met Paul a couple years later, I had been visiting quilt shops all over the country. (As one does….) I came to the conclusion that none of them had what I wanted. (big bold bright contemporary and ethic prints) One day in 1998, as I watched him designing websites for other businesses, I had an idea…..

And the rest is history.

We are still having fun running this crazy business together, and we hope that our joy comes through in the art, color and design that we share with you!

Thanks for sharing our journey with us.

Sharing our passion for fabric…..
Luana and Paul

Subscribe to my artist website.
www.luanarubin.com – New Blog Post about the Kyoto Quilt Festival!

Travel/Lecture Dates:
May 23-26 – Quilt National – Dairy Barn – Athens OH
June 18-20 – Quilt Canada – Toronto Ontario

Visit eQuilter’s Instagram, Pinterest or TikTok pages for Color and Design ideas.

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

Check out our Video pages for interviews and show reviews.