eQuilter Blog

Have you noticed, it’s kind of hip to ask someone “What’s your Spirit Animal?”

The topic seems to be in the air, because I also see tee-shirts saying things like “Coffee is my Spirit Animal”. Huh?

In case you are not familiar with this concept, a Spirit Animal is also known as a Totem Animal, or a Medicine Animal, and is a common theme among indigenous peoples around the world. When an animal shows itself to you, it is giving you a message or a blessing. When you become associated with a certain wild animal, that is your Spirit Animal. When the animal appears to you it can bring wisdom or healing.

This idea comes up in pop culture a lot. Think of the Patronus in Harry Potter, or the Daemons of The Golden Compass, or even the hoot owl in the song by Michael Murphy – “Wildfire”. Mysterious animals or birds (like eagles) are believed to help humans pass over from one world to the other. Over 1 million Medicine Cards have been sold over the last 27 years. (A card deck to help get in touch with one’s Spirit Animal.)

I see this in how people are drawn to certain animals in our wildlife fabric collections. Some people have a special affinity to wolves, for instance, and they buy every wolf fabric we carry when they discover our fabric wolf packs.

For others it is Elephants, or Tigers, or Whales, my favorite…Polar Bears. We can’t explain why, but we are drawn to the beauty and the soul of a certain species. It could be an Owl, or an Eagle…or a Hummingbird. When something about an animal speaks to you, or touches your heart, there is a blessing or a message for you.

What is your Spirit Animal?

To our friends in Canada – I hope to see you next week in Toronto at the Quilt Festival. I’ll be at the Tuesday night award ceremony, and I’ll be walking the show all day Wednesday. (June 13-14)

sharing your Passion for Fabric…
Luana

Enjoy artist interviews, tutorials, and quilt festival tours, on our eQuilter Video Page.

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Travel Calendar:
June 13-14 – Quilt Canada Festival in Toronto
June 19-21 – Cleveland – Fresh Quilting
July 13-17 – Sacred Threads & Not Fade Away
July 30 – Intl Quilt Trends lecture at San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles
Aug 12 – Festival of Quilts, Birmingham UK
Sept 16 – Quilters Take Manhattan
Oct 1-11 – Intl Quilt Trends lecture at New Zealand Quilt Symposium – Christchurch
Dec 29 2017 – Jan 5 2018 – Tanzania Africa Wildlife Migration Tour – Limited Spaces
Feb 22-25, 2018 – QuiltCon – Pasadena, California

As I am sure you know, eQuilter gives 2% of sales to a carefully vetted list of charities, and tonight I was happy to attend a Rainforest Action Network (RAN) event as a corporate sponsor, where Paul Hawken spoke about the organization Project Drawdown and the book “Drawdown”, which features solutions for using humanity’s collective wisdom to solve the climate change problem. I especially like solution #6 – Educating Girls!

This time of year here in the Northern Hemisphere, many of us are busy with our gardens, planting vegetables and tending to flower beds. We invite pollinators such as Bees and Butterflies into our gardens, not always knowing that plants and seeds have been impregnated with pesticides that can kill those pollinators.

The eQuilter Fabric Garden happens to be lush with an abundance of flowers and bees and butterflies at the moment, (see the fabric collage above!) but I’ve noticed the last several years that there are less and less pollinators visiting my backyard garden. Our local beekeeper has sold our family jars of honey for 30 years, but this year he has no bees and no honey.

However we’ve seen lots of Bees on fabric this year, in fact I’ll say that it is a very hot trend. We can barely keep our best Bee fabrics in stock! And why? Because so many of you are concerned about the plight of Bees too. I can’t wait to dive into my new copy of ‘Drawdown’ to read about proactive solutions for our planet’s climate challenges.

To our friends in Canada – I hope to see you in Toronto at the Quilt Festival. I’ll be at the Tuesday night award ceremony, and I’ll be walking the show all day Wednesday. (June 13-14)

sharing your Passion for Fabric…
Luana