eQuilter Blog

Well, it’s that time of year again. Another year has flashed by, and we are marking another anniversary since Paul and I started this business in the basement of our house. This is our 19th anniversary, which means we are starting our 20th year of business. Seriously, how did that happen?

Fortunately, I married a genius. Between the two of us, we had a lot of dovetailing knowledge and experience when we launched this idea. We both came from entrepreneurial families, and we both like to work hard and be the master of our own destinies.

As you may know, our charity program is one of my favorite parts of our business. Last month we hit another milestone – $1.5 million raised for charity. We have very close relationships with several of our charity recipients, because we want every dollar to stretch as far as possible, and help as many in need as possible.

Our Comfort Quilt program has distributed over 12,000 donated quilts, through our partnership with Mission of Love, and recently also with the CU Boulder student chapter of Engineers Without Borders. I’ve just uploaded photos from a recent trip to Nepal where the students hand-carried quilts up to remote mountain vilages, to distribute to new mothers who had lost everything in the earthquakes. You can see photos here.

To those of you who have made and donated comfort quilts over the years, for hurricane, fire, flood, earthquake and tornado victims…and our first effort which was for survivors of 9/11…I am sending you all a big hug and deep heartfelt thanks. As you know, I promise to make sure all of those quilts are personally gifted to those most in need, and I have to also thank Kathy Price (Mission of Love) for her tireless work in stretching our donations to help those who are most forgotten, most desperate, most hopeless.

Together all of us have made a huge difference in thousands of lives, and I am humbly grateful to everyone who has contributed to these efforts…including those of you who have bought fabrics from us over the years!

My gratitude also extends to our staff, many who have been with us 10 years or more, and we are so happy to have shared this journey with you. How lucky are we, that we get to work with art, color and fabric every day?!? We are blessed.

sharing your Passion for Fabric…
Luana and Paul

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eQuilter Classroom & Event Calendar:
March 17 – eQuilter St Patricks Charity Sewing Day! (Please RSVP!)
April 14-15 – Lisa Walton workshop @ eQuilter Classroom
May 11 – eQuilter Chromazone – Color Marketing Group @ eQuilter
March 1 – May 15 – Registration for ‘Love Your Mother‘ Quilt Challenge

Luana’s Travel Calendar:
April 5-7 – SAQA Conference San Antonio TX
April 25-27 – Quilting Arts TV
May 18-20 – Quilt Market – Portland OR
June 27 – July 11 – Sweden
Nov 13-19, 2018 – POLAR BEAR Tour – Register NOW!

The Registration Page for the Love Your Mother Contest and Exhibit just went LIVE March 1st, but you have until the May 15 deadline to make a quilt and try for the top prize of a new BERNINA 570 QE machine.

The juried exhibit will premier in Houston this fall and I can’t wait to see what you all are making to show how you Love Your Mother Earth!

On Monday it was announced that Jaftex is acquiring Free Spirit (who had announced earlier that they were closing) so that is good news for all you Kaffe and Tula fans. This means we will receive collections that were already on order, and will be able to order future collections (under new ownership) when we go to Quilt Market in May.

We have now reached another milestone in our charity program – $1.5 million donated to charity – from the 2% of all sales. We appreciate your business which supports our ongoing efforts to help those in need.

This week we sent an extra $3000 check to Mission of Love to help with an upcoming Denton Program airlift of food and other supplies to indigenous Mayan people of Guatemala. On April 9 the Air Force will fly an ambulance and firetruck to Guatemala, and in June MOL will have another airlift including building, educational, sewing machines, material and medical supplies; 60,000 pounds of Aid. Kathy and I are discussing the trip to distribute donated quilts and supplies for Puerto Rico hurricane victims. She has already sent supplies to the devastated Dominican Island community.

If you went to QuiltCon, you couldn’t miss the quilts by the kids of the Social Justice Sewing Academy in the Kids section of the exhibits. I had a nice long chat with their development director this week, and we are going to get involved with supporting their work. I hope to host one of their events this summer in our new classroom. In case you missed my Midweek Creative Nudge, I’ve posted more photos from QuiltCon including the SJSA quilts.
(www.sjsacademy.com)

As you probably noticed at the top of this newsletter, this week we are celebrating our 19th anniversary since we started our business in the basement of our home. Our actual anniversary is March 10 (which is also my mom’s birthday) so I’ll be talking more about this amazing journey in next weekend’s email.

I have so many exciting things lined up in the pipeline for eQuilter and also myself personally, which will be revealed in the next year….our 20th year of business! Seriously, how did that happen?!?

sharing your Passion for Fabric…
Luana and Paul