eQuilter Blog

I love secondary colors. Actually, I love weird, indescribable colors. As a painter, when I look at an impossible mix of colors (like in this sunset image) I can't help but think – how would you mix those colors and paint them without making MUD?

Complementary colors ( like purple and gold) vibrate when next to each other, but when you paint those colors and they run into each other… you get a greyish brown mess. (otherwise known as "mud" to painters.)

When your palette is full of rich hues on fabric, you don't have to worry about accidentally making mud. You just put that purple and gold right next to each other, maybe throw in some orange and teal for the WOW factor, then stand back and enjoy the compliments on your complements!

Here is a collage of some photos I took on the Big Island over the weekend. I snapped a stenciled sign on a wall with a vivid golden-orange on an electric purple… then captured incredible sunsets two nights in a row, featuring similar colors!

Different color stories create different moods:
Primary colors (Red, Yellow and Blue) make quite a different statement from secondary colors. (Purple, Orange and Green)

Trendy colors (like Mauve, Grey and Seaglass Green) have a different message from Classic colors. (like Navy Blue, Khaki Tan, and Lobsterhouse Red)

What story will you tell next…with Colors?

Luana

?Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.?
-John Steinbeck

?Children are happy because they don?t have a file in their minds called ?All the Things That Could Go Wrong.??
-Marianne Williamson

?The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second best time is now.?
-Marshall Lyautey

photo collage: Luana Rubin
Seaside mural – Cinque Terre
Inlaid marble alter – Rome

Last Saturday my segment on Quilting Arts TV aired on our local PBS station, with my discussion about how to audition coordinating fabrics with those amazing and sometimes perplexing large scale prints!

We've just posted this segment on our video page – so have a look and then share your thoughts and questions about working with large scale prints.

http://www.equilter.com/cgi-bin/webc.cgi/videos.html

Sophie and I had a blast at the Long Beach Quilt Show last weekend, and we shot 2 videos with Bonnie McCaffery which you'll see here in the next few weeks. Sophie and I both did our own video review of some of our favorite pieces – it was a lot of fun!

My kids start school in 2 1/2 weeks which is kind of depressing but I know it will be a relief when we all get going with our new schedule. Sam was in bed with a high fever last night so we are just staying home, working on getting him better before we fly to Hawaii to see Paul's folks next Friday. Next week I'll be writing to you from Honolulu, and I'll be sure to do a photo essay with some color and image inspirations.

This week I am sneaking in a sale on my fabrics and quilt kits – this is a one time sale including many of my classic collections – all the kits have the instructions included so it is easy to snap up a kit and have a creative inspiration hanging on your wall in a short amount of time.

http://www.equilter.com/cgi-bin/webc.cgi/st_main.html?catid=166

I am writing to you from my hotel in Long Beach, where Sophie and I are
attending the 3rd Long Beach Quilt Festival.

http://quilts.com/newHome/shows/viewer.php?page=SummerFestival

I just love this show – and I
love the view of the Queen Mary from the hotel window!

http://www.queenmary.com/

Last night we arrived, went to the Quilt Art reception, then walked out to the marina across the road to have dinner and look at the boats.

Yesterday Sophie and I got her hair done at Downtown Disney at the Disney
365 salon. This is the first time Sophie has had anything like this done,
and she got a really cute updo somewhere between "princess" and "rock star".
I am posting photos on my photo page! When we went to the quilter party she
was so proud of her new "do", and went around the room chatting to friends
and customers. She visited with her friend Karey Bresenhan (director of
Quilts Inc and the quilt festival) and Pokey Bolton. (host of Quilting Arts
TV) Sophie says she is going to run the business someday, and that is a
distinct possibility!

We snuck into California one day early so we could go to Disneyland. I love
going to D-land so I can experience how Creativity and Customer Service
combine to make a peerless experience for the customers. I always come away
with inspirations about how we can make our little business better for our
site visitors! And of course I love to look at the costumes and tons of art
at D-land. We have sold our fabrics to Disneyland and Universals Studios
for years, and I am always on the lookout for something that might have been
purchased from eQuilter.

When I was a little girl, I lived in Southern California and watched Walt
Disney introduce The Wonderful World of Disney on TV every Sunday night.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walt_Disney_anthology_television_series

I went to Disneyland once as a little girl and I will never forget the feeling
I had afterwards. As an adult I have bought several Walt Disney biographies,

http://www.justdisney.com/walt_disney/biography/long_bio.html

…Disney customer service books, and coffee table books about their early
concept artists who did the original illustrations for Snow White, Bambi,
etc. which eventually became the hand-drawn animations of those early
movies. I feel like Walt is a creative mentor, although I never met him in
person. Whenever I walk through the front gate of the park, I always look up
to the windows over the City Hall where he had his private apartment, and
imagine him peeking through the curtains….

"Who Says?"

Last night I went to the Tuesday night "World Music" concert – part of the summer Colorado Music Festival here in Boulder. I saw a band named Ljova and the Kontraband, which is described as "Eastern-European and Gypsy melodies, Latin rhythms, Jazz-inspired improvisations, and deeply rooted Classical forms given new meanings in original compositions that fearlessly forge a new direction, with a nostalgic gaze towards the past."

http://www.ljova.com/kontraband

Wow! What a MIX! I loved the Klezmer melody over a Cuban beat… the gypsy rhythm with the Russian lyrics… the accordian played by a young guy who looked like Danial Day Lewis in a Trilby hat… Ljova's colorful printed shirt and his wife's large scale printed dress. The songs were in assymetrical 7/8, 13/8 and 15/16 time signatures. At the end of each song, the woman behind me came up with new breathless superlatives, which made the whole thing that much more entertaining.

One of my favorite ways to get my creative juices running, is to play world music CDs in my studio, or to hear live music. In this case it was an indescribable mix of international influences that broke all the rules but at the same time allowed the audience to release all expectations of genre and enjoy the music for what it was… without a label or rules… or without a beat to which you could tap your foot… but it worked!

We quilters often need permission to break the rules, make something that can't be labeled, and invent a new genre of creative quiltmaking that doesn't have a name yet…

Who says we have to make quilts from only cotton?

Who says a patchwork has to be pieced?

Who says florals can't be mixed with plaids?

Who says quilts have to be symmetrical and perfect?

Write down 5 rules that you follow in quilting, then scratch them out one by one, and write down a different approach or perspective for each rule. Then go and brainstorm on each broken rule in your journal, and choose one to inspire a small piece to test out your idea. Don't make it to go in a show, or to please anyone but yourself. Take some time to play… be curious…. allow yourself to be present in the process and not attached to the outcome. You'll be amazed at what happens!

"Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought."

? Albert von Szent-Gyorgy

After 7 years, we are having a reunion with all the families and girls who were on the same China adoption trip with us in April 2002:

We made it to Minneapolis, got our dinky rental car that starts by pushing a button, and drove to our hotel which is next to the gigantic Mall of America. The girls took about an hour to warm up to each other and then once they started playing, they had a blast. We went out to Buca de Beppo for dinner – (20 people!) – and then the kids played in the hotel pool til 9 pm while the adults watched.

Tomorrow we are going to the Mall of America at 10 am, which apparently has an amusement park and rides in the center of the multi-level mall. There are 3 boys around Sam's age here – 12, 13 and 14 yrs old, so he is having a blast.

Here is one of the first group photos. All 6 girls adopted April 2, 2003 were born in June or July of 2002. So they all just had their 8th birthdays. One of the girls has a younger sister adopted from another province – she is in the front.

Sophie is on the right with the red "Peace" shirt.

This last weekend we had a memorial service for my stepdad, and my brothers were visiting for a few days. Sophie and I invited my niece Katie to spend Sunday afternoon in my studio, teaching her how to sew and make a quilt top.

I brought a few packages of strips, and let her pick out two that she liked. She picked out a package of 30's prints, and another package of batiks and hand-dyes. We got her set up up on Sophie's old machine (the one she used before she got her kid-sized Bernina "Bernette") and got Katie sewing strips together, learning as she sewed.

Several hours later, the girls triumphantly held up a completed quilt top. I got the biggest smiles when I got out the video camera to capture the moment. Katie started out thinking she wanted to be a fashion designer (my old career) but I think a quilter was born Sunday afternoon in my basement studio. How appropriate, because this is also where eQuilter was born in March of 1999. Whatever she does with her new sewing skills, it will grow from the moment of excitement when she held up the completed quilt top that she sewed herself.

That evening, when the girls showed off their giant quilt top at the family dinner, my mom commented that Katie was just glowing with pride and happiness. I took quite a bit of video footage during the afternoon, so we'll be putting together a little video about the 3 of us girls making a quilt top in my basement!

Teaching children how to sew is one of the most rewarding things I have ever done – their unabashed joy and enthusiasm charges me up and I am ready to go light a Creative Fire in my studio afterward. This past year, every time I have a chance to speak to a group of quilters, I talk to them about mentoring a young quilter or teaching kids' sewing classes. It is up to all of us to mentor and teach the next generation of fabric lovers.

If you have an extra sewing machine, set it up next to yours and invite a young person to sit beside you, dig through your stash, and make a simple quilt top in a day. The seed you sow will grow far beyond the shining face that is next to you in that moment!

Simplicity in a Complex World –
The more complicated things get in this crazy world, the more we crave simplicity. When we started our business, the internet was relatively new and for many quilters the whole dial-up thing (remember the sound of the modem connecting to the internet?) was a novelty.

If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook, perhaps you saw the article I posted earlier this week, about more high speed internet access being planned for rural areas.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/10/technology/10broadband.html?_r=1&src=tptw

In other news this week, there were stories about how many communities are having to cut back on their library funding, which is where many Americans have gone for internet service if they don't have their own computer.

I've found recent articles about internet access being a "right" very interesting – as many groups are calling for the US to get involved with making internet access available to all – or at least to more people – as it is in many places in Asia and Europe. In many cases to get a job one has to submit a resume or fill out an application online – i.e. can't get the job unless they have internet access.

Obviously if you are reading this, you have *some* kind of internet access. We have quilters from all over the world who write to us, to let us know they are so grateful to have a service such as ours. The last year when I traveled overseas so much, I met many quilter friends in person for the first time, with whom I'd been friends for many years! I still find that so amazing.

Next April I'll be taking a group of quilters to visit some other friends – Princess Mirah and her husband Carl Burman in Bali!

http://sewmanyplaces.com/tours/bali_0411.html

The trip is starting to fill up so if you are interested in joining us (and visiting Mirah's palace and batik factory) please contact Sew Many Places about a payment plan.

http://sewmanyplaces.com/contact.html

You can read more about Mirah's company Bali Fabrics (whose fabrics we carry) on their website.

http://www.bali-fabrics.com/shop/

This weekend we have family visiting for my stepdad's memorial service. When we all come together for weddings, memorials, and graduations, we are reminded of how precious each day is… and how it is the simplest things in life that bring us the greatest joy and the deepest sense of peace.

.. like a needle and thread and a quilt in your lap….

I have a lot of admiration for people who just put themselves out there to share their creative expression – independent of whether they are appreciated or even noticed. Whether we are talking about Michelangelo freeing the sculpted figure from the giant block of marble, or the street musicians who take out their instruments and start playing, the urge is the same.

It is an inner urge to share, to create, to express something that can't necessarily be put into words.

This time of year as our senses are full of luscious seasonal smells, tastes and colors… we can simply become a channel to take in that inspiration and then let it out in a quilt, in a piece of fiber art, or in a detailed embellishment.

So what is the equivalent of going on the street, taking out your instrument, throwing down your hat, and just playing your heart out?

Go spend time with your stash. Play with your fabric, audition various combinations, look for unintended happy consequences, and then come back to it in a day or a week with a fresh eye.

Be the accordion player, with your hands full of music and stars. Paint the street with a rainbow of notes, and then dance in the stardust that falls at your feet.