Free Pattern – Native Horse Spirits

Posted on January 8, 2018 by Luana

Your exclusive eQuilter Free Pattern takes us on a journey to the Great Southwest, through graphic artwork depicting the dignified native peoples and their natural landscapes.

Two spectacularly detailed panels feature noble spirits amidst majestic horses, eagles, and magnificent mountains, and are set within sashing of graceful Southwest design motifs.

This 48″ x 57″ quilt design makes a lovely wall-hanging for a rustic setting, or a comfy lap quilt. And you can customize the pattern using our three different native spirit panels.

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

And don’t miss our popular ‘Mystic Flowers‘ and ‘Mustang Sunset‘ 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.

Share Post:
Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedin
Posted in Free Quilt Patterns, Quilt Pattern, Quilts | Comments Off on Free Pattern – Native Horse Spirits

Happy New Year from the Serengeti

Posted on January 3, 2018 by Luana

I am writing to you on New Years Day from the Serengeti Plains of Tanzania Africa, because when this email goes out Wednesday, I will be totally off the grid for a few days.

This trip has been a great way to set the Reset button for the New Year, and I am taking lots of photos that will bring inspiration for the rest of 2018. I am traveling with Natural Habitats, who also organize our Polar Bear tours. (If you call them for info, be sure to ask for our eQuilter specialist, Aly) I am writing this on the 3rd day of our photo safari, and every day our expectations have been exceeded. May all of your travels bring you such joy.

So far we’ve seen 3 leopards, 22 lions, 6 cheetahs, 18 elephants, 6 giraffes, and a long list of other species like ostriches and warthogs. The herds of wildebeests, zebras, and a huge variety of gazelles and antelope are making the Great Migration. The plains are vast and the skies are incomprehensibly huge being off-grid in such a wild and wide open space shifts something in one’s psyche. The migrating herds follow the dark rainstorms because that is where the grass will grow tomorrow. Many animals are heavily pregnant and so Nature has shown us her fertility in this endless cycle of renewal.

As a creative person, I am tapping into this limitless fertile potential to brainstorm on my own potential for 2018 and I am reminded that Nature follows her own cycles that I can ignore, or surf. The raw power of the changing seasons and the wisdom of animal instinct is a reminder that Nature in her infinite splendor has a divine perfection that plays out in an intricate detail, whether or not we are paying attention.

When I return home I will be sharing my photos and inspiration with you in many ways. My fellow travelers here (including eQuilter customers) share their daily illuminations over dinner each night, and that is part of this experience as well.

I wish you creativity in 2018, and a source of inspiration that grows as it is used. The source of creativity is limitless, if we open our heart and soul to the beauty around us every day.

sharing your Passion for Fabric…
Luana

********

Event & Travel Calendar:
Dec 29 2017 – Jan 5 2018 – Tanzania Africa Wildlife Migration Tour
Feb 22-25, 2018 – QuiltCon – Pasadena, California
Feb 26 – Marty Ornish CQC workshop @ eQuilter Classroom
Mar 1 – May 15 – Registration for ‘Love Your Mother‘ Quilt Challenge
April 5-7 – SAQA Conference San Antonio TX
April 14-15 – Lisa Walton workshop @ eQuilter Classroom
May 11 – eQuilter Chromazone – Color Marketing Group
Nov 14-20, 2018 – POLAR BEAR Tour – Join me in Churchill!

Share Post:
Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedin
Posted in Animals, Creativity, Travel | Comments Off on Happy New Year from the Serengeti

Free Pattern – Mustang Sunset

Posted on January 2, 2018 by Luana

Take a trip to the wide open spaces of the wild west, with this gorgeous Horse-themed Free Quilt Pattern. We wish you a Happy New Year with these iconic images of a ‘Mustang Sunset’, celebrating the wide open spaces of America’s western lands.

Dan’s combination of illustrations and textured silhouettes gives this a lovely weathered look, with a vintage color palette and prairie styling.

This 65″ x 77″ quilt is perfect for those twin bunk-beds for your little buckaroos, or a comforting nap quilt on the couch in your cabin.

… from the ‘Mustang Sunset’ collection by Dan Morris for Quilting Treasures.

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.

Share Post:
Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedin
Posted in Animals, Free Quilt Patterns, Quilt Pattern, Quilts | Comments Off on Free Pattern – Mustang Sunset

Gratitude and Dreaming

Posted on January 2, 2018 by Luana

Happy New Year from the Serengeti!

Tonight I am writing to you from Tanzania, where I am spending New Years on a photo safari at the Great Migration of the Serengeti.

Yesterday I went to a market and cherry-picked a group of African fabrics which I will hand-carry home on January 8th. Watch the newsletter for when these will be available online.

I am traveling with Natural Habitats (the same company that organizes my Polar Bear tours to Churchill) and we have a famous wildlife expert as our guide. He has worked as a safari guide for 29 years, and has worked on National Geographic specials about Cheetahs and other African animals. He also has worked on several BBC wildlife shows, and has worked with Richard Attenborough. We’ve been discussing our mutual admiration for Attenborough’s lifelong work.

Last night he was telling a great story about the animals that wander through the tented camps at night. One time a lioness brought her cubs and left them between two tents, while she went out hunting. She knew it was safe to leave the cubs there! Once he saved a cheetah cub from being eaten by a lion, and a year later he ran into the same mother cheetah with her 3 cubs. The young adult cub jumped up onto the hood of the car and hung out with this guide, who is convinced the cub came to thank him for saving his life.

People who love wildlife are very passionate about wildlife conservation, and we know many of you feel this way because of the wildlife fabrics that you purchase from us. I’m taking lots of wildlife photos on this trip, so I can share with all of you. I’ll be off the grid for a week, but will be excited to share my experiences with you at the end of the safari.

As one year ends and another begins, we know that many of you are gearing up for the big quilt making time of the year, to stay home over the winter months and sew like crazy! We thank you for supporting our charity program and our business, and we look forward to serving your quilting needs again in 2018.

Wishing you a creative and joyful New Year!

sharing your Passion for Fabric…
Luana and Paul

Share Post:
Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedin
Posted in Animals, Charity, Travel | Comments Off on Gratitude and Dreaming

Free Pattern – Mystic Flowers

Posted on December 29, 2017 by Luana

This is one of the most gorgeous quilts we’ve offered in our exclusive Free Pattern program. If you’ve been holding out for a larger quilt pattern that can be used for a bed, this 64″ x 81″ pattern might be just for you.

Mystic Flowers features our seven-petal, large-scale blossoms, which seem to shimmer and shine with light and spinning ombre color.

Three panels (in 3 color combinations) of Mystic Flowers are set in moonlit Starry Sky and Pleiades Star Cluster hexagons, triangles and borders, for a new bed quilt that will give you the most amazing celestial dreams!

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

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.

Share Post:
Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedin
Posted in Free Quilt Patterns, Quilt Pattern, Quilts | Comments Off on Free Pattern – Mystic Flowers

Classes and Creative Retreats at eQuilter in 2018

Posted on December 27, 2017 by Luana

We hope you had a wonderful holiday weekend – to our friends around the world! Speaking of which – by the time you read this I will be somewhere between Frankfurt and Tanzania. I’ll be posting photos on my flickr page and my Facebook page, as I have internet access. I’ll be out of touch for a week while I am in a tent on the Serengeti Plains.

I am so excited to launch our eQuilter Workshop schedule for 2018, with international teacher Lisa Walton, who is the president-elect 2018 for SAQA. We are honored that she is coming to teach her Fantastic Fusion class the weekend of April 14-15, and you can reserve your spot by registering now!

Lisa is one of those fantastic creative quilters from Australia, which is why she is the first non-US president of SAQA. Everywhere I go around the world, there she is! In fact this last year I saw her not only in the US, but also I spent a day with her in Tokyo, and we had Indian food in New Zealand.

We are finalizing details with several other nationally-known teachers with creative retreats and classes that will knock your multicolored socks off! We have a beautiful award-winning Hampton Inn just one block away from our headquarters, so if you live out of state and have dreamed of visiting Beautiful Boulder, we can help you with a group rate at the hotel. Hope to see you here in the next year!

sharing your Passion for Fabric…
Luana and Paul

********

Event & Travel Calendar:
Dec 29 2017 – Jan 5 2018 – Tanzania Africa Wildlife Migration Tour
Feb 22-25, 2018 – QuiltCon – Pasadena, California
Feb 26 – Marty Ornish CQC workshop @ eQuilter Classroom
Mar 1 – May 15 – Registration for ‘Love Your Mother‘ Quilt Challenge
April 5-7 – SAQA Conference San Antonio TX
April 14-15 – Lisa Walton workshop @ eQuilter Classroom
May 11 – eQuilter Chromazone – Color Marketing Group
Nov 14-20, 2018 – POLAR BEAR Tour – Join me in Churchill!

Share Post:
Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedin
Posted in Classes, Creativity, Travel | Comments Off on Classes and Creative Retreats at eQuilter in 2018

Free Pattern – Let’s Build Construction

Posted on December 26, 2017 by Luana

This bright and bold Free Quilt Pattern is just perfect for that little Truck-Lover in your family…I bet you know just the kid who would go crazy over these fun Construction Vehicles.

Make this 65″ x 80″ quilt as a Twin or Youth bed cover, or for the most fantastic playmat!

Start with the Big Blocks in the main collection Panel, then mix in these fun novelty coordinates, and finish it off with an engineered stripe for the border. We know this will bring a big smile and lots of rumbling truck noises from the lucky kid who receives this construction-themed quilt.

… from the ‘Let’s Build’ collection by Nidhi Wadhwa of Blue Fish Designs for Henry Glass & Co.

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.

Share Post:
Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedin
Posted in Free Quilt Patterns, Quilt Pattern, Quilts | Comments Off on Free Pattern – Let’s Build Construction

Gratitude and Dreaming

Posted on December 26, 2017 by Luana

Our eQuilter Elves have been working hard this last week, getting out packages to customers around the world. We had our Ugly Sweater Day and Secret Santa exchange, ate cookies and celebrated the season. If you have a package on the way, there might be a little elf pixie dust in there!

The end of the year seems so far away in the Spring and Summer, and then it creeps up on us like a Sledgehammer. The good thing about getting older is, I know the busy stress of the holidays will pass just as quickly as it arrived, and then there will be a big long chunk of time that I can spend in my studio making quilts.

Every day I try to take some quiet time to unplug from a busy lifestyle, and create an empty space where creativity, inspiration and healing can enter. You can call it Meditation, you can call it Studio Time, you can call it a Bubble Bath…but making that peaceful empty space of time every day makes us happier, nicer human beings. So I wish you some “me” time over the next few days, perhaps to dream of your next big creative project.

My holiday season has been busier than usual because I am leaving on a photo safari Dec 26. I’ll be off the grid for at least a week, on this 2-week trip. It will take me 32 hours to get to Tanzania. (including a 10 hour layover in Frankfurt, where I have a hotel ‘day room’ to grab a few hours of sleep.) I depart Tuesday, and arrive Thursday!

If you have ordered the Africa version of our Love Your Mother panel (hopefully because you are making a quilt for our challenge and contest, and maybe for the Houston exhibit!) you can track my trip in East Africa.

The CU students flying to Nepal today (Engineers Without Borders) have 15 donated quilts which will be hand-carried up a mountain footpath to those who have lost their homes to the earthquake, who are still living in temporary shelters. Imagine how wonderful for them to receive these donated quilts from our customers! Many thanks to all of you who have contributed to our Comfort Quilt projects this year, after so many natural disasters. That is the true Christmas Spirit…to give selflessly to those in need. We are so grateful for your generosity.

Hurricane and Earthquake Comfort Quilt projects:
Next eQuilter Charity Sewing Day: Sat Jan 13, from 9 am to 4 pm.

We wish you a warm holiday with loving friends and family, and the time to dream.

sharing your Passion for Fabric…
Luana and Paul

Share Post:
Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedin
Posted in Charity, Creativity, Travel | Comments Off on Gratitude and Dreaming

Free Pattern – Nouveau Muses

Posted on December 22, 2017 by Luana

This week’s eQuilter Free Quilt Pattern is based on one of our exclusive digital printed panels, inspired by the artwork of Czech artist Alphonse Mucha.

Three graceful ladies are depicted in this Art Nouveau styled artwork, along with stylized flowers and embellished botanics. The figure panels are set between ornamental-stripes above and below. Hoffman hand-dyes are used to tie it all together.

This 45″ x 45″ quilt project makes a stunning wall-hanging, and is sure to be admired by your friends and fellow quilters! Bring an extra layer of elegance by outlining figures and flowers with free-motion stitching and shimmering metallic threads.

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

And don’t miss our popular ‘Mermaid Dreams‘ and ‘Night Owl Nature‘ 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.

Share Post:
Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedin
Posted in Art, Free Quilt Patterns, Quilt Pattern, Quilts | Comments Off on Free Pattern – Nouveau Muses

Creative Nudge – The Longest Night

Posted on December 20, 2017 by Luana

Thursday Dec 21 (at 9:28 am MST) is the Winter Solstice…the longest night of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. Many symbols and rituals of Christmas are associated with traditions of the Celtic peoples who celebrated the solstice as the rebirth of the Sun and the Light after the long dark night of the Winter Solstice.

The quilt featured in the center of this collage is “Celtic Fox” by Kathy McNeil, and it was a favorite piece at the Houston Quilt Festival this year. Kathy wrote “the Celtic Fox symbolizes a need to think quickly, to employ cleverness and wisdom.”

Foxes have been a favorite theme… a popular trend…over the last couple years. Some consider the Fox their Medicine Animal, and are drawn to this animal because of the Celtic or Native American wisdom associated with the clever Fox.

Dec 22 is an important date in our family. This year on Dec 22, it will be 22 years since we lost our baby daughter Hanna, who was the inspiration for our eQuilter charity program. It is also the date my grandma died many years earlier…she was a ceramic painter, embroiderer, garment sewer, singer and pianist.

Next month we will reach another milestone – $1.5 million raised for charities and non-profit organizations. The pain of losing Hanna has now transcended to the joy of helping others over the last 19 years. My grandmothers, their traditions, and their creative arts, are surely expressing themselves through our business and my own creative work.

On the longest night of the year, I invite you to meditate on the circle of love, life and creativity, that inspires us on this journey.

sharing your Passion for Fabric…
Luana and Paul

********

Event & Travel Calendar:
Dec 29 2017 – Jan 5 2018 – Tanzania Africa Wildlife Migration Tour
Feb 22-25, 2018 – QuiltCon – Pasadena, California
Feb 26 – Marty Ornish CQC workshop @ eQuilter Classroom
Mar 1 – May 15 – Registration for ‘Love Your Mother‘ Quilt Challenge
April 5-7 – SAQA Conference San Antonio TX
April 14-15 – Lisa Walton workshop @ eQuilter Classroom
May 11 – eQuilter Chromazone – Color Marketing Group
Nov 14-20, 2018 – POLAR BEAR Tour – Join me in Churchill!

Share Post:
Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedin
Posted in Animals, Charity, Creativity | Comments Off on Creative Nudge – The Longest Night