Free Pattern – Aussie Mates

Aussie_Mates

Your favorite little person will be hopping with happiness over this
adorable 42″ x 58″ Down Under quilt, with a Koala, Kangaroos, Emu, Pelican, Parrot, Possum, and more smiling Australian critters.

Colorful Tree Frogs alternate with animal names in the black and white block border, and you’ll appreciate how that black and white check theme is carried through on the inner border. Strips of Flame Red add that perfect pop of color to make this a favorite in the playroom or nursery!

Hang it on the wall, or save it for Storytime or a special Naptime treat!

…featuring fabrics from the ‘Aussie Mates’ collection by Delphine Cubitt for Henry Glass.

You may order the pattern as configured, or customize it to your liking with any of our over 20,000 fabrics. Just place your desired fabrics in your Wish List, and these fabrics will appear in the Fabric Selector below the pattern.

This pattern was designed in EQ7, which is available here at eQuilter.

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 – Black & White & POP!

Untitled-1

One of the great trends going on now in quiltmaking is all about COLOR

Graphic modern quilts are using that old
Black + White + Color combination.

Here is a Black + White + Orange quilt made up of lots of wonky little log cabin blocks. (Center of image) I have set it in a collage of fabrics now in stock at eQuilter, to give you some ideas about what fabrics you could use in your next project. I always love analogous color stories, so I mixed in some Berry/Orchid shades, along with the Juicy Orange.

Mieko Miyama has used the most interesting mix of black printed fabrics in her quilt – “Log House on the Flower Hill”. Have you ever seen Black-and-Charcoal fabrics, and wondered how they can be used? Here is a great example! She also mixed in some black/charcoal prints with gold metallic accents. This brings such an unexpected rich feel to the quilt. (This quilt was photographed at the Tokyo Quilt Festival last month.)

This quilt was part of a larger group of Log Cabin quilts. The modern Japanese interpretations of this traditional block, were absolutely delightful!

My first quilt block was a Log Cabin, so I get a kick out of seeing what quilters are still doing with this favorite old block. The classics live on forever!

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Free Pattern – Bejeweled

Bejeweled

This week’s 64″ x 74″ exclusive eQuilter Free Pattern showcases Caryl’s painterly textures in a modern pieced design. Shimmering diamonds and crystalline shapes ‘pop’ against the black backdrop in this eye-catching beauty!

As you probably know, Caryl is an icon of the industry, and her work is currently being honored in “40 Years of Color, Light & Motion” at the University of Mississippi, in Oxford, Miss. You can see our interview with Caryl on our video page!

…featuring fabrics from the ‘New Wave’ collection by Caryl Bryer Fallert-Gentry for Benartex.

You may order the pattern as configured, (click through here to see the specifics!) or customize it to your liking with any of our over 20,000 fabrics. Just place your desired fabrics in your Wish List, and these fabrics will appear in the Fabric Selector below the pattern.

This pattern was designed in EQ7, which is available here at eQuilter.

Click Here for a Video Tutorial of the Free Pattern Designer.
Download Instructions for the pattern at the bottom of the pattern designer page.

Many thanks to Toby Lischko for this exquisite quilt pattern.

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Men and Quilts

Last night I went to the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum’s opening reception for “No Girls Allowed” – the 13th biennial exhibition of quilts made by men. It was juried by our friend Bill Gardner, and it was SO much fun to go to a quilt party with so many creative men! We are a corporate sponsor for the event, and we are just tickled to support this opportunity for the guys to show off their talent and their passion for quilting.

Paul has become a quilt designer for our eQuilter Free Pattern program, so to us this is a no-brainer. Just in case you missed it, be sure to check out my interview with quilt artist Danny Amazonas!

This week I spent a couple days in Durango, and attended some meetings regarding the toxic mine spill into the Animas River. I have made a quilt on this topic and I have been more involved in issues of environmental toxins since our daughter was poisoned at her public school.

Now that the problem in Flint Michigan has become front page news, and the methane spewing at Porter Ranch in SoCal has caused evacuations, people are starting to wake up to the fact that these problems are often covered up. So I think I will make a few quilts about this ongoing and escalating issue in our world. Several of our charity recipients work on issues of communities being poisoned, and wilderness/wildlife being polluted. Fortunately the world is starting to wake up to the serious longterm issues caused by these toxins. If you want to learn more, follow Erin Brockovich on Facebook!

Joe Cunningham’s quilt about the Flint water disaster was featured in The Detroit News this last week. I didn’t see him at the event last night, but I was thrilled to see his Activist quilt featured in the news! Go Joe!

Some people call this political art but since this is an election year I am afraid that term could be misinterpreted, so I call it Activist Art. Artists have been using their work to make public statements (or secret messages) for millennia.

Have you made quilts to bring awareness to an issue like this?

My Polar Bear Tour with Natural Habitats is now open for registration, and space for this trip is also *extremely* limited so check out the details and call Aly to register right away to guarantee your spot on the Polar Rover!

We are approaching the deadline for the Cuban Arts Tour registration, so if you want to join us please sign up online now!
Travel Calendar:
Feb 18-19 – QuiltCon in Pasadena CA
March 5 – Lecture at BERNINA Presser Foot – Longmont CO
May 8-15 – Luana’s CUBA ARTS TOUR! – Limited Space Remaining – Sign up NOW!
Nov 15-20 – Luana’s Polar Bear Tour – Registration Open Now!

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Free Pattern – Draw Near

Draw-Near

This week’s Free Pattern is a 50″ x 69″ wallhanging that glorifies the life of an artist!

Due to popular demand, we’ve restocked a favorite collection, celebrating the joys of drawing and coloring. As adults rediscover the meditative qualities of doodling, painting and playing with colors, this Artist-themed group has enjoyed a resurgence of popularity.

Features artsy details like paintbrushes, crayons, watercolor paints, drafted patterns, portfolios, and dress forms.

…featuring fabrics from the ‘Draw Near’ collection, which is part of the ‘Handmaids’ series by J. Wecker Frisch for Quilting Treasures.

You may order the pattern as configured, (click through here to see the specifics!) or customize it to your liking with any of our over 20,000 fabrics. Just place your desired fabrics in your Wish List, and these fabrics will appear in the Fabric Selector below the pattern.

This pattern was designed in EQ7, which is available here at eQuilter.

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 – Mommy’s Little Helpers

Cats

Tonight I am writing to you from the lobby of an airport hotel in Denver. I had 2 flights canceled today, and I decided to crash at a local hotel and catch an early flight. Oh the joys of travel!

This week I’d like to share with you the work of quilt artist Naoko Suziki. Every year she exhibits an epic Cat Quilt at the Tokyo Quilt Festival. There are always so many people clustered around her quilts, you can barely take a photo.

This is her 2016 Cat Quilt – it is titled ‘Together with Mother’. This is a closeup section of the quilt, so you can appreciate the applique and embroidery details in this Mother-and-Kitten quilt.

What is it about Cats and Quilters?

We just love our kitties, and our beloved kitties love our quilts and our sewing spaces. They jump in our lap when we are trying to sew, they roll around on our quilt tops to show their approval, they sleep in our stash, and they make a special effort to leave their hair on our most important projects.

And that’s why we love them.

I’ve included a collage of Cat fabrics currently in stock at eQuilter, to keep Naoko’s cats and kittens company.

Meow!

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Free Pattern – Mirabelle La Vie En Rose

LaVieEnRose

Enter the mystical world of Mirabelle with this week’s exclusive eQuilter Free Pattern, featuring the delicate illustrations of Leanne Ellis for the ‘La Vie En Rose Mirabelle’ collection.

Dragonflies, butterflies, vintage roses and lacey cameo portraits give this a magical and sweetly wistful quality. Mirabelle coordinates and a Hoffman hand-dye complete this quilt project in shades of Blush Rose and Dove Gray.

…featuring fabrics by Leanne Ellis and Santoro for Quilting Treasures.

You may order the pattern as configured, (click through here to see the specifics!) or customize it to your liking with any of our over 20,000 fabrics. Just place your desired fabrics in your Wish List, and these fabrics will appear in the Fabric Selector below the pattern.

This pattern was designed in EQ7, which is available here at eQuilter.

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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Credit Where Due

I am starting to upload photos from the Tokyo Quilt Festival. It takes me a little longer because I edit in Photoshop to make up for the less-than-perfect lighting in the baseball stadium, and also because I want to make sure the artists’ names are attached to all of the quilt photos.

Every year visitors come to the show, and post photos without the names of the artists. That is because many of us international visitors can’t read Japanese…but that is no excuse not to include the artist’s name. So you will notice that when the artist’s name is not spelled out in romaji on the namecard or in the show book, I paste in the image of the Japanese Kanji in the image.

I urge everyone who goes to this show to find a way to include the quilters’ names with their quilts, so credit will go where it is due! And of course we hope when our Asian counterparts visit our US quilt shows, they will do the same for us when posting images of our quilts.

You are welcome to share links to my photos and video pages, and to share individual photos, but I do ask that if you copy or save the photo, make sure you repost with my name as the photographer. Thanks! 🙂

While in Tokyo I finally met one of my Facebook friends in person – the Taiwanese quilt artist Danny Amazonas. He was gracious enough to grant an interview, and I had a private showing of his fantastic mosaic art quilts. He has already been on the cover of AQS and Quilt Italia, and I bet you’ll be seeing more of him in the near future. Here is the video interview featuring his work…Enjoy!

Also – an update on our quilt drive for the earthquake victims of Nepal:
We have already sent over many of your donated quilts to Kathmandu, but we have received many more quilts. That is a *good* problem to have! (Many thanks to all of you who have donated your beautiful quilts.)

I just started to reach out to my network to see if we could get some more suitcases of quilts on their way to Nepal, when I got a phone call this morning. I had an invitation to have lunch with Lama Jigme Dorje, a Rinpoche from a monastery in Nepal. He is working to build a school in his mountain village, so all the children, including the poor, the disabled, and the *girls* can attend school! (Right now there is only a school for boys who want to become monks at the village monastery.) He has invited me to come to Nepal to distribute the quilts in person…not sure if I will do that….but in the meantime I’ve tapped into a new network of volunteers who travel to Nepal often. Sophie and I had lunch with him, discussed our quilt project, and received a blessing.

If you’d like to read more about his project and possibly make a contribution to his work, you can visit their website.

If you live in Colorado, I’d love to see you this Friday at the opening of the “No Girls Allowed” exhibit at the Rocky Mtn Quilt Museum in Golden. We are a sponsor for this show – all quilts made by MEN!

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Free Pattern – Goldfinch Garden

Capture

Spring is just around the corner…really!

This week’s exclusive eQuilter Free Pattern is a delightful celebration of Springtime blossoms and twittering Goldfinches, in fresh pastels and mid-tones.

The soft Pink and Blue palette (echoing the Pantone Colors of the Year for 2016) are accented with Yellow and Pearlescent Sky Blue, bringing sunshine and happy smiles to your sewing space for the last few weeks of winter.

…featuring fabrics from the ‘Goldfinch Garden’ collection by Dona Gelsinger for Timeless Treasures.

You may order the pattern as configured, (click through here to see the specifics!) or customize it to your liking with any of our over 20,000 fabrics. Just place your desired fabrics in your Wish List, and these fabrics will appear in the Fabric Selector below the pattern.

This pattern was designed in EQ7, which is available here at eQuilter.

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 – Leaves of Morris

Morris

I’ve got a thing for William Morris.

He was considered a radical Victorian designer, which is why his work still inspires us today.

This gorgeous quilt “Acanthus” by Yoko Ueda, was a star attraction in the special William Morris exhibit at the Tokyo Quilt Festival. You can see why!

Along the right side I’ve added some William Morris reproductions and other fabrics in stock at eQuilter now…to pick up the bright colors in Yoko’s absolutely delicious quilt.

Morris’ Acanthus Leaf design is one of his most famous. (You can see it in the plum-colored swatch in the bottom right corner.) This full-sized quilt was immediately recognizable as his Acanthus design – from a distance – and yet Ms. Ueda has made it undeniably her own.

It is very exciting to see the evolution of Japanese quilting over the years, and especially in the big picture, to see how Japanese quilters have inspired US and European quilters…and how Western quilts (and art and design) also inspire our friends in and around Tokyo.

William’s appreciation for Nature and his exquisitely detailed work, was expressed in a stylized technique, inspired by the Arts & Crafts Movement. I see his appreciation for Asian art in his work also…which no doubt later inspired the Mingei (Folk Crafts) movement in Japan.

Art, design and color are part of the spiral which circles around but always returns at a new level. The cycle of inspiration that continues to spiral between the Asian world and the Western world…is a gift for all of us.

Watch for my photos popping up shortly on my Flickr page…I am working on getting all the artists’ names with the images so credit will go where it is due!

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