eQuilter Blog

Congratulations to all the winners at QuiltCon this weekend! We congratulate Audrey Esarey for winning the eQuilter Machine Quilting Award for her beautiful quilt ‘Raspberry Roulette’.

Special congratulations to Veruschka Zarate for her Best of Show award, for her quilt “Dignity”. We have always considered her a special talent, and we are happy to carry her patterns, including her award-winning Joan of Arc design.

If you have attended my power point lectures, you have probably seen an image of Veruschka’s large quilt which depicts the Dignity statue made by Dale Lamphere. I have included the image of her quilt top since she posted it on social media….a couple years ago?

This 50 foot high sculpture in South Dakota depicts a Lakota woman holding a star quilt. The star quilt held by the woman has more than 100 blue diamond shapes that move in the wind. You can read more about this on Wikipedia.

Early Monday morning I fly to Osaka, arriving Tuesday night in Kyoto. Thursday is the setup day. I am showing 12 of my art quilts. If you are coming to the event at the Mikyako Messe Conference Center, I will be in my artist gallery Fri Feb 28 to Sun March 2. Please make a note of my speaking times:

Friday 2 pm – 20 minute talk on the Artist Panel
Saturday – Artist Talk in my gallery at 10 am and 11 am.

I am planning for an Open Studio here at eQuilter on Sunday March 9, from 1-5 pm, before I send quilts back to their museum and exhibit venues March 10. If you are local, I hope you can come to see all 12 quilts before they are disbursed again. More info on that in upcoming emails.

sharing your love for fabric,
Luana and Paul

Travel/Lecture Dates:
Feb 25 – Mar 5 – Kyoto Quilt Festival – Luana’s Solo Gallery
March 9 – Public Open Studio – 1-5 pm @ eQuilter
(March 8 – group studio visits by appointment)
Apr 3-6 – SAQA Conference – St Pete, Florida
April 23-26 – Washington DC
April 27- May 3 – Alegre Retreat

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 I am very busy getting ready for my solo gallery at the Kyoto Quilt Festival. I leave Monday, and the festival is Feb 29 to March 2 at the Miyako Messe Convention Center. I will be speaking for about 20 minutes on a panel on Friday at 2 pm. On Saturday I will give 2 gallery talks with a translator, at 10 am and 11 am. I know several of you are coming to the show and I look forward to seeing you again!

We are sponsoring the Machine Quilting Award at QuiltCon this week. I had to make a last minute decision not to go this year, because it is right before I leave for Japan. Sometimes my eyes are bigger than my stomach, when I think about how much travel I can cram into a month. For those of you going to QuiltCon, enjoy the show and be sure to check out the Machine Quilting winner which will be hanging near the Best of Show.

Right now I am finishing a quilt about the history of American Wilderness Conservation, for a Semi-Quincentennial exhibit next year. That will be coming to Japan with me, along with another new quilt with a Mt Fuji theme, that is a tribute to Itchiku Kubota. I hope you are also having a productive start to 2025. I am keeping my sanity by staying busy in the studio.

Sharing our passion for fabric…..
Luana and Paul

Travel/Lecture Dates:
Feb 25 – Mar 5 – Solo Gallery @ Kyoto Quilt Festival Feb 28 – Mar 2
Apr 3-6 – SAQA Conference – St Pete, Florida
April 23-25 – Washington DC
April 27- May 3 – Alegre Retreat

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.

We hope you all had a lovely Valentines Day with lots of hearts and flowers.

QuiltCon is this week in Phoenix Arizona. eQuilter is the sponsor for the Machine Quilting Award, and I can’t wait to see who wins this year!

It is now 1 week until I leave for my solo gallery and lecture at the Kyoto Quilt Festival. I am still planning for an Open Studio on Sunday March 9, from 1-5 pm, before I send quilts back to their museum and exhibit venues March 10.

I gave a talk on Art & Activism last month for the Fraser Valley Modern Quilt Guild in BC Canada.
You can view a recording of that lecture now on our YouTube page.
Sign up to follow my artist blog here.

We are still collecting comfort quilts for those who lost their homes during Hurricane Helene in NC. You can either drop donations off *in person* at our office, or ship directly to this NEW address for distribution:

Shannon Townsend
57 Eden Glen Rd
Black Mountain, NC 28711

sharing your love for fabric,
Luana and Paul

Travel/Lecture Dates:
Feb 20-23 – QuiltCon – eQuilter is a Sponsor!
Feb 25 – Mar 5 – Kyoto Quilt Festival – Luana’s Solo Gallery
March 9 – Public Open Studio – 1-5 pm.
(March 8 – group studio visits by appointment)
Apr 3-6 – SAQA Conference – St Pete, Florida
April 27- May 3 – Alegre Retreat

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 I’d like to share the work of a quilt artist whom I admire.

Niraja Lorenz recently had several works in the Lincoln Center gallery in Fort Collins Colorado. I’ve appreciated her work for awhile, so jumped at the chance to go see several of her pieces in this gallery 1 hour north of here. It is very difficult to choose which one to share, so enjoy this one, and I will share more work from this gallery on my photo pages.

From the artist statement:

“Inspired by both science and spirituality, Niraja’s art flows through her, teaching her about uncertainty. Chaos Theory has influenced her to see the world as fluid and unfolding, unpredictable yet not random.

She works primarily with solid-colored commercial and hand-dyed cotton. Using subtle variations of color and value, she pieces together thousands of bits of fabric, many less than an inch square and lines 1/4″ wide.

From a distance her creations can be interpreted in many ways: a magnification of microscopic particles, the vastness of space, a cross-section through the Earth, an aerial view of a cosmopolitan area, or all of these in one piece. Up close, her quilts reveal unexpected intricacies as ever more subtle layers of astonishing details are discovered.

After years of creating original pieces, she studied with Nancy Crow in 2007. Her work quickly evolved as she discovered that she had a unique visual voice.”

And yes, all those tiny stripes and snips are pieced solids. So for Niraja, and all of you who love to sew and cut up, and sew and cut up and sew some more….we keep our solid categories stocked!

Sharing our passion for fabric…..
Luana and Paul

Travel/Lecture Dates:
Feb 25 – Mar 5 – Solo Gallery @ Kyoto Quilt Festival Feb 28 – Mar 2
Apr 3-6 – SAQA Conference – St Pete, Florida
April 23-25 – Washington DC
April 27- May 3 – Alegre Retreat

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.

Here’s an important deadline for one of your quilt projects:

July 4th, 2026

This is the upcoming 250th anniversary of our Independence Day. It is known as the Semiquincentennial, but I call it the Semi-Quin because I am finishing my 3rd quilt for this huge event.

After attending the AQSG event last year, I realized that 50 and 100 years from now, there will be people studying and admiring the Semi-Quin quilts we make today.

Would you like to join me?

In honor of Black History Month, I’d like to share with you one of the 2 quilts I’ve made for a Semi-Quin exhibit at the Virginia Quilt Museum next year.

It was inspired by a visit to Mount Vernon last year. Because my brother works as an architect in Washington DC, and because I love to visit the museums and historic sites in our nation’s capital, I go to Wash DC about once a year. This was my 4th visit to Mt Vernon over several decades. I have focused on different topics each time I visit, by signing up for a guided tour.

This time I signed up for a relatively new tour – The Enslaved People of Mount Vernon. Honestly I had no idea that over 500 slaves lived and worked at Mt Vernon during George Washington’s lifetime. So I decided to make a quilt about this, because I figured others would appreciate learning this important piece of American history.

I have also made a quilt about the Wild Ponies of Assateague Island for this exhibit, and I am finishing a larger quilt now to celebrate the 250 years of precious American Wilderness.

Details:
I used Golden Fluid Acrylics on an Evolon background. Then I freemotion stitched the architectural details, the red calligraphy is a freemotion satin stitch, then created the figures and trees with fused applique, and did more freemotion stitching to finish. It is 20″ x 20″ – stitched on Bernina 790 and Q20.

What do you think is important to put in a quilt, for our 250th Anniversary?
Please join me!

Sharing our passion for fabric…..
Luana and Paul

Travel/Lecture Dates:
Feb 25 – Mar 5 – Solo Gallery @ Kyoto Quilt Festival Feb 28 – Mar 2
Apr 3-6 – SAQA Conference – St Pete, Florida
April 23-25 – Washington DC
April 27- May 3 – Alegre Retreat

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.