eQuilter Blog

This morning we started the day with a presentation by Elin Noble, who told us about her month-long artist residency in Denmark. During her residency she went on long walks, gathering plant material for her dye experiments. She shared her process of cooking the plants, dyeing the fabrics, and then creating a darker color with iron-dyeing. She also walked along the beach to gather rocks, that she would later use to weigh the Lightweight Silk Organza while stitching by hand.

She showed us a photo of a beautiful natural-dyed yellow silk organza coat using the Korean Bojagi technique. ‘The Apple Tree on the Abandoned Railroad Line’ was the name of the exhibit that resulted from 2 artist residencies. She showed us several series of yellow-dye experimental projects, including Cheesecloth, and the subsequent patchwork collages in which she uses Mistyfuse. Two beautiful translucent patchwork layers of cheesecloth collage were fused into one work of art.

Elin has been inspiring us to use natural dyes for a long time. I have a book by Elin that I bought as we were launching eQuilter. It is still on the shelf in the basement of our home where we started the business.

Our kids grew up in the business so they took turns having textile-themed projects for Science Fair. They all did one science fair about natural dyes – experimenting in several different plant sources – from berries to leaves from our garden. They dyed cotton, silk and linen … then wrote about the differences of absorption.

Their 2nd science fair project was doing the Burn Test. You should all know about this also, so you can differentiate 100% cotton from cotton/poly blends, or fake cotton. (100% polyester) The information is all online these days, but essentially, synthetics melt and natural fibers turn to ash. If you think about it, polyester is made from petroleum, and essentially melts into a bead of plastic. Yuck!

I have had a love affair with natural fibers since my first job in the fashion industry. I was fortunately that my first job in L.A., and my second job in Hong Kong, were designing silk garments. Working in Asia, I learned all about silk production and different types of silk textiles. In fact I am visiting an old friend from Hong Kong on Monday, before I fly home.

Now I am brimming with creative juice and ready to get back in the studio!

sharing your love for fabric,
Luana and Paul

Follow my artist blog here.

Travel/Lecture Dates:
April 23-26 – Washington DC – Private Event
April 27- May 3 – Alegre Retreat – Gateway Colorado
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.

Today I am sharing another quilt from the Kyoto Quilt Festival.

This quilt by Taiwanese quilter Tsui Hua Chen is about “Taking a Stroll”. Notice that instead of a binding to finish the edge, the border is made up of a continuous strip of scrappy log cabin roses linked together.

Today April 2nd I am off on a ‘stroll’ as well….attending the SAQA conference in St. Petersburg in Florida. SAQA stands for Studio Art Quilt Associates. Over the past 35 years, SAQA has grown into an international community of over 4,000 artists, curators, collectors, and art professionals. I am proud to be a JAM (Juried Art Member) of SAQA, and I consider them my tribe. If you are interested in art quilts, check us out! Wherever I go in the world, I find SAQA members.

Sharing our passion for fabric…..
Luana and Paul
www.luanarubin.com

Travel/Lecture Dates:
Apr 3-6 – SAQA Conference – St Pete, Florida
April 23-25 – Washington DC (Private Event)
April 27- May 3 – Alegre Retreat
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.

A few weeks ago after I returned from Japan, I started a new project. I try to learn a new technique, or advance a new skill with each new project. So invariably, there is always a day about halfway through when I stop and say to myself – “What was I thinking? This is a disaster!”

Fortunately I know from experience that if I just keep working, I can push past the doubt, and get to a place that fills me with joy and anticipation. I suspect this is why so many of us have a pile of UFOs from our early years of quilting. We become bored or frustrated, set it aside rationalizing that we’ll get back it later….and 10 years later we find it in a dusty stack.

May I suggest that if you have blocks or a half-finished quilt in a pile somewhere, fish them out, and donate them to a charity sewing group, or a classroom. No need to feel embarrassed….just let it go and move on to your next creative challenge.

As March wraps up, and Spring begins to blossom all around us…you may find yourself blossoming with new ideas and energy as the sunlight returns to fill our work spaces with light.

Speaking of sunlight – if you struggle with making color choices indoors – now is a good time to take those fabrics outside to give them a 2nd look in natural light. Just don’t leave them outside because they will fade under that dazzling light!

March 29 is National Mom and Pop Business Owner Day. Today we celebrate indie-owned businesses run by intrepid couples who run their family businesses as a team. Many quilt shops are run by some combination of a husband and wife team. Everyone brings their talents to the table and with that Yin/Yang energy, somehow everything gets done. When Paul and I opened eQuilter 26 years ago, we pooled our talents and experience, to create a new kind of business. Today there are plenty of online retailers, but our team’s passion for fabric, design, and customer service is the special sauce that keeps our customers coming back for more!

sharing your love for fabric,
Luana and Paul

Follow my artist blog here.

Travel/Lecture Dates:
Apr 3-6 – SAQA Conference – St Pete, Florida
April 23-26 – Washington DC – Private Event
April 27- May 3 – Alegre Retreat – Gateway Colorado
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 our warehouse is bulging with a new shipment of our exclusive Rubin Design Studio fabrics, and I’ve put together some new designs, and some re-printed favorites…to give you some quilt ideas.

We have a whole group of fans who are making One Block Wonder quilts from our Animal Portrait Panels, and now another group is playing around with our Mushroom prints. Personally I just adore our Gnomes who each have a different personality. Add the magical glowing house in the woods under a Full Moon….and this is a place I’d like to escape to in my dreams!

Come on in, and pull one of the antique books off the vine-covered shelf. Maybe take a swig of the home-brewed flower liquors and herbal potions conveniently sitting next to the books.

Sharing our passion for fabric…..
Luana and Paul
www.luanarubin.com

Travel/Lecture Dates:
Apr 3-6 – SAQA Conference – St Pete, Florida
April 23-25 – Washington DC (Private Event)
April 27- May 3 – Alegre Retreat
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.

March 22 is World Water Day. Some of us have the relative luxury of clean abundant water. However there are many places in the world where accessing water is a daily struggle. So today eQuilter is donating to organizations who fight for clean non-toxic water, and help to build clean water systems for communities desperate for this basic element of Life.

Our quilt fabric industry has been moving towards water sustainability for years, although lately the opposite is often reported. Please do not confuse the waste and pollution caused by the garment industry and ‘fast fashion’, with our little quilt textile industry. It is especially important to point out that the mature digital-printing textile industry is a low-water and low-pollution industry compared to standard printing and dyeing factories. This is one of the reasons we have championed digital printing over the years.

For those who still think digital printing is low quality – I invite you to catch up with modern present-day quality digital fabrics. When the digital printing industry was in its infancy, there were some sub-standard products that went out to quilt shops and the public. This is still true often with pigment digital printing, but the modern digital-printing factories use multi-million dollar printing machines that have been fine-tuned to use dye sublimation with precise printing techniques. The dye soaks into the fabric and bonds to the cotton fiber on a molecular level. (unlike pigment printing) There is a lot of mis-information being projected onto the quilt fabric industry, so when you read about the waste and toxic by products of the fashion industry, keep in mind this is a separate but much larger industry.

I will remind you that I came from the fashion industry, and visited about 400 factories in 10 Asian countries during those years when I lived in LA, Hong Kong, and then New York. I hope to write a magazine article on this topic later this year, based on what I have learned over the years. It is a topic I have discussed with our quilt industry suppliers for years. It is a topic we should all consider, especially when purchasing garments. I saw the sins of the garment industry making cheap fashion in developing countries, which is why I was so happy to find the quilting industry in the early 90s. In the 80s, when I was designing high quality expensive garments, we rejected those factories, but I will never forget what I saw….

Needless to say, eQuilter’s exclusive digital printed fabrics under the Rubin Design Studio label, are dye-sublimation printed at the highest quality factories. We are known for our quirky creative designs. When our customer demand outstripped what we could get from our suppliers, we started our own line, and our customer have been loving our collectible artwork ever since!

My favorite new Rubin design this week –
the Mystical Octopus!

sharing your love for fabric,
Luana and Paul

Follow my artist blog here.

Travel/Lecture Dates:
Apr 3-6 – SAQA Conference – St Pete, Florida
April 23-26 – Washington DC – Private Event
April 27- May 3 – Alegre Retreat – Gateway Colorado
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.

What times we live in now!
There is plenty of fodder for artists who like to put social commentary or activist messages in their work. And others find peace in slow stitching and patchwork quilting. Our chosen art and craft of quilting offers us many ways to navigate these uncharted waters.

During my trip to Japan a couple weeks ago, those concerns were more distant, and I was able to enjoy the peaceful ambiance of the Kyoto Quilt Festival…featuring the works of Japanese, Korean and Taiwanese quilters. I was honored to share my work alongside their exhibits.

This arresting portrait was at the entrance of the show, made by Taiwanese artist Yu Ying Pan.

“Supreme Power” – 155 cm x 158 cm

‘The Tiger, in Eastern culture, symbolizes strength and courage. Ancients believed that the tiger embodied both fierceness and composure.

In life we face many challenges and tests, and we need courage and patience to navigate them. I hope to embody the power and calm of the tiger, leading myself to overcome the obstacles in front of me and march forward boldly.

The artwork uses fabric pieces in various colors, cut into triangles, squares and rectangles, to form a backdrop of a sunset, mountains and grasslands. The tiger is created by layering and piecing together unusual fabric patterns, with areas lacking color enhanced with stitching to blend the design. This technique is simple and accessible through machine sewing.

The tiger’s simple yet clear expression reflects the essence of “Supreme Power” portraying a bold, singular presence.’

This quilt is also powerful because of the direct gaze of the subject. I went to a talk today about “Creative Courage for Artists” and it made me think of the serene but confidant expression on this tiger’s face. May we all carry this tiger energy into our creative efforts this week.

Sharing our passion for fabric…..
Luana and Paul
www.luanarubin.com

Travel/Lecture Dates:
Apr 3-6 – SAQA Conference – St Pete, Florida
April 23-25 – Washington DC (Private Event)
April 27- May 3 – Alegre Retreat
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.

Dear Friends,

Today is designated as National Quilting Day, but for so many of us, we celebrate Quilting every day that we can get our hands on our fabrics and sewing machines!

There is a hunger right now for making things with our hands, and having a way to focus our minds and calm our hearts. When I attend quilt festivals there is an energy there that is hard to describe, but it is vibrant and passionate. I love going to quilt events and sharing our mutual enthusiasm for sewing, art, design and color. It helps me to make sense of the world. It is my refuge from the storms outside – literal and figurative – and it helps to heal my soul and strengthen my Mama Bear center. Do you know what I mean?

The last 2 weekends I have had so much of this kind of interaction, and it is lifting me up and helping me to see into the future with a positive perspective. Last weekend my open studio attracted old friends, activists and artists. The previous weekend I was with my Japanese, Korean and Taiwanese soul sisters. It was hard to say good-bye, but our Creative Juice Tanks were full from the time we spent together.

So we work in our studios and then we come together to celebrate our mutual love of Quilting, Fabric, and Art. Like I said…every day is Quilting Day!

This week we are focusing on pollinators, and featuring Butterfly fabrics. I am planning to make a pollinator garden this year, because of all the news about the pollinator populations crashing…in particular Monarch Butterflies. I can’t save them all by myself, but I can plant Milkweed and other flowers to feed the ones that migrate through my yard. We have also planted flowering perennials and trees around the eQuilter property for this same purpose, and do not spray toxic pesticides or herbicides at home or at the warehouse landscaping: a bee and bird friendly habitat!

You may recall that I made this quilt for an Endangered Pollinator exhibit, and it is now traveling in the SAQA “Camouflage” exhibit. Also featured on the cover of the show book which we have in stock.

Do you know that the big box stores sell seeds and plants that are impregnated with pesticides that kill bees and birds? This is why I buy plants from local trusted nurseries, and buy seeds that are guaranteed not to be soaked in pesticides like Neonicotinoid. Please join me in planting Pollinator-friendly gardens this year!

We are happy to announce that our exclusive Rubin Design Studio has expanded to include Quilt Backing collections? Our first shipment is online now and we invite you to check it out…and more is on the way next month.

sharing your love for fabric,
Luana and Paul

Follow my artist blog here.

Travel/Lecture Dates:
Apr 3-6 – SAQA Conference – St Pete, Florida
April 23-26 – Washington DC – Private Event
April 27- May 3 – Alegre Retreat – Gateway Colorado
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.