Creative Nudge – Spring is Here!

Today was the Spring Equinox here in the Northern Hemisphere. (and Happy Fall Equinox to our friends Down Under!) For those of you on the East Coast enduring your 4th Nor’Easter, I thought I’d send you some Spring Floral Cheer to brighten your snowy day. If the bad weather is keeping you indoors…a Snow Day is a Quilting Day!

Sophie is excited to plant carrots and cucumbers in our garden this year, and she’s getting a head start on gardening by growing sprouts in our kitchen. We’ve had a recent wet snow, so our foothills are tinged with green and a dusting of snow on the top…with shimmering glacial peaks in the distance. My peony plants have formed a thick green clump of glossy leaves and the season’s first robin has visited. It is a lovely time of year when we can finally give a sigh of relief, knowing that Springtime is truly just around the corner.

Last October I was in Christchurch New Zealand, and I spent an afternoon photographing their Spring flowers in the gorgeous Botanical Gardens there. This image features several photos from those gardens, plus some of my favorite florals that we have in stock now.

Happy Spring!

sharing your Passion for Fabric…
Luana and Paul

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eQuilter Classroom & Event Calendar:
April 14-15 – Lisa Walton workshop @ eQuilter Classroom – REGISTER NOW!
May 5 – eQuilter Charity Sewing Day! (Please RSVP)
May 10 – Deadline for dropping off Nepal Quilts
May 11 – eQuilter Chromazone – Color Marketing Group @ eQuilter
March 1 – May 15 – Registration for ‘Love Your Mother‘ Quilt Challenge

Luana’s Travel Calendar:
March 26-31 – New York
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

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Free Pattern – Jungle Giraffes

Have you heard about the Giraffe Hotel in Africa, where the Giraffes come up to the window to eat breakfast? This week’s Exclusive Free Quilt Pattern lets you imagine that a pair of friendly Giraffes are waiting to be fed at your window.

This 42″ x 61″ quilt features a digital-printed panel with a double portrait of these two beautiful animals, with exquisite closeup detailing and so much personality! It is so realistic, you’ll be tempted to chat with them over your morning coffee.

… from the ‘Artworks’ collection by Val Warner for Quilting Treasures.

And don’t miss our popular ‘Arabesque‘ and ‘Hummingbird Bouquet‘ 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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Hurricane Quilts On Their Way This Week

We have a huge batch of comfort quilts ready to be shipped out to Caribbean hurricane victims on Monday, thanks to a connection made through the owners of Timeless Treasures in New York. You may recall that we partnered with Timeless who offered the use of their warehouse, to distribute 1500 of your donated comfort quilts after Hurricane Sandy. Our usual distribution channel which Mission of Love would have used for Puerto Rico, is not available due to cutbacks on this government program. So this batch of quilts is going to Miami next week, and then will be hand-carried to St. Maarten which experienced similar devastation and flooding from Hurricane Irma.

Today we had another fantastic group of quilters show up for our Charity Sewing Day. I just love these women. They show up and sew like crazy, and this pile of quilts just grows and grows. They take home fabric and come back a month later with finished quilts. We have a fantastic partnership. I provide the fabric, the space, the coffee and cookies, and they just crank ’em out!

We had a lovely slide and video presentation from members of our local CU chapter of Engineers Without Borders. You may have seen the photos I posted recently of the mothers who received your donated quilts, in the earthquake-devastated area of Nepal. We had a professor and 2 engineering students come and tell us about their New Years trip. The next student trip will be May 15, so we are asking for another batch of donated quilts to be here by May 10, for this 11 week working trip by the engineering students.

International quilt celebrity and artist Lisa Walton will be here soon, and we have students coming from locally and out of state. Come meet Lisa and find out why she was picked to be the first international president of SAQA! (Studio Art Quilt Associates)

The Registration Page for the Love Your Mother Contest and Exhibit is LIVE, but you have until the May 15 deadline to make a quilt and try for the top prize of a newly introduced model BERNINA 570 QE machine. The juried exhibit will premier in Houston!

I saw my first Robin of the season today.
I think Spring is really coming this week!
(Watch for the Midweek Creative Nudge and the Spring Equinox message.)

sharing your Passion for Fabric…
Luana and Paul

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Free Pattern – Bay Pegasus

Wow! …This week’s exclusive eQuilter Free Pattern features a gorgeous Pegasus skimming over Twilight-hued waters, with a brilliant sunset on the horizon.

This stunning Digital panel is from our exclusive collection, only available at eQuilter.com ….and we’ve set this beauty in a starry border that brings a sense of expansive space to this quilt.

Your Horse-Crazy kids and Fantasy Fans will be delighted with this 63″ x 52″ quilt, which makes a fantastic wall hanging but might also bring sweet fantasy flying dreams as a Nap/Lap Quilt. Enjoy!

… from the ‘Magical’ collection by the Rubin Design Studio, designed exclusively for eQuilter

And don’t miss our popular ‘Mystic Flowers‘ and ‘Hummingbird Bouquet‘ 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 – What’s Your Muse?

Have you found your Muse?

Have you experienced an inspiration so profound that it lights a Creative Fire, and fills you with a passionate drive to Create?

Everywhere I go, I take photos. If I don’t have a camera, I use my phone. I’ve upgraded to a phone with a high quality camera, so I can capture more of those fleeting moments. I may capture the detail of an incredible image, or I may just capture an idea that is the seed for a bigger cycle of creativity.

I flip through magazines, I browse the coffee table books in people’s living rooms, I meander through public gardens, and I pop in and out of artsy gift shops on Pearl Street here in Boulder, or any artsy town I visit.

Wherever I go, I look for galleries, museums, antique shops, and vintage dress shops. Because you just never know when you will see that next gem of an idea that will get those wheels turning.

Here is a detail of a quilt I saw at QuiltCon. The design and construction are beautiful, but the artist’s inspiration is a great illustration of my point:

Carol Freda’s Artist Statement for “Deliquescence” reads –
“This quilt was inspired by the art of Matthew Shilan’s paper sculpture – Ara 117.2012. I was intrigued by how the highlights and shadows, of a photograph of his work, could be used to create an image of this using fabric.”

Wow, inspired by the light and shadows of folded paper! This fires up a whole new way of thinking, and a whole new line of inquiry and curiosity. Traditionally a “Muse” is female, but I think we should expand the definition of this word! The original muses were the 9 daughters of Zeus, presiding over the various arts – a muse was a goddess or the power inspiring a poet, artist, musician, etc.

I have set this detail shot of Carol’s quilt, on a background of Jeanie Sumrall-Ajero’s “Dream Big” digital panels.

Train your eye to look for pattern, color, and design everywhere…and there you will find your own Muse.

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:
March 26-31 – New York City
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!

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Free Pattern – Arabesque Room With a View

This week we bring you a Free Quilt Pattern with one of the most popular Digital prints we’ve ever had – the Arabesque Floral Ombre.

It might seem hard to cut up such a gorgeous piece of fabric, but this pattern will inspire you to create a windowpane quilt that looks out onto a garden of Boho florals in a luminous ombre paisley. The colors evoke the spices and silks of ancient trading routes across the Orient.

This 50″ x 50″ quilt makes a fantastic wall-hanging, and will turn any space into a ‘Room With a View.’

… from the ‘Arabesque’ collection by RJR Fabrics.

And don’t miss our popular ‘Fairy Firefly Wishes‘ and ‘Hummingbird Bouquet‘ 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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Daylight Savings!

Here is our Bi-Annual Service, reminding you to SPRING AHEAD and set your clock forward one hour if you live in a US Daylight Savings Time zone. For the rest of you …enjoy that extra hour of sleep.

I finally hit my limit and had to turn off the news all this week. How wonderful to be able to go into the studio, turn on the music, and work on a quilt project. I’ve been thinking again about how lucky I am to have found this world of quilting, where we can practice the art and craft alone as a healing meditative process, or in a group as a supportive social experience.

Today is not only eQuilter’s 19th Anniversary (since our website went live, and we started our business in the basement of our house) but it is also my mom’s 81st birthday. We had a lovely birthday lunch and then watched a performance of young Irish dancers. Their costumes, and the fiddle music, really got us in the mood for Saint Patrick’s Day next Saturday.

We are having our last Winter Charity Sewing Day on St Patrick’s Day, and we’ll be sewing with GREEN fabrics, but also now our focus is on finishing the quilt tops…getting them sandwiched, stitched and bound so we can get them out to hurricane and earthquake survivors. Unfortunately our 2 wonderful BERNINA dealers are not available this coming weekend, so if you are coming please bring a machine. (Many thanks to Blakeman Sewing and The Presser Foot for providing machines recently!)

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 newly introduced model BERNINA 570 QE machine. (WOW!!!)

This juried exhibit not only will have fantastic prizes, but will premier in Houston and then travel, so please DO enter this contest so you can share in sending a message around the country and hopefully overseas. Remember we do not want you just to embellish the panel, but we want to see you take elements from the panel and creatively re-interpret into your own image of how you Love Your Mother, and how you feel about what is happening on our beloved planet. We already have one magazine interested in covering the exhibit, so DO YOUR BEST and accept the challenge!

Thank you to all of us who have supported our business and our charity programs over the last 19 years. We consider you our friends and part of the eQuilter family, and we feel so lucky to share with you our passion for Art, Color and Design on Fabric.

Just wait til you see what is coming for our 20th Anniversary!

sharing your Passion for Fabric…
Luana and Paul

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Free Pattern – Puppy Pals

If you want to put a smile on someone’s face, Puppies are the answer!

Our exclusive eQuilter Free Quilt Pattern features 8 vignettes of adorable little puppy pairs, and the only side effect might be Cuteness Overload.

We’ve combined 2 digital-printed panels as the starting point for this 57″ x 73″ quilt design. The border uses a coordinate paw-print and a Hoffman Hand-Dye, to frame these cuddly canines.

… from the ‘Dog Breeds’ collection by the Rubin Design Studio, designed exclusively for eQuilter.

And don’t miss our popular ‘Fairy Firefly Wishes‘ and ‘Hummingbird Bouquet‘ 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 – Spreading Love…One Quilt At A Time

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

********

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!

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Free Pattern – Laurel Burch Wild Ones

The artwork of Laurel Burch has been bringing smiles for decades, and this week our Free Quilt Pattern may bring giggles of delight with this snuggly Flannel quilt.

Brightly-colored jungle animals are the focal point of the central panel, and more animals grace the 3 concentric borders in this 54″ x 54″ design. Lions, Tigers, Cheetahs, Parrots and Elephants are part of this Flannel Menagerie.

This quilt would make a great Crib Quilt or Play-mat for that little person who loves brilliant colors and wild creatures.

… from the ‘Wild Ones’ collection by Laurel Burch for Clothworks.

And don’t miss our popular ‘Mystic Flowers‘ and ‘Hummingbird Glory‘ 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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