This gorgeous Ginger Kitty is all ready for a Springtime Garden Party, in this week’s eQuilter.com Free Quilt Pattern. The details in this artwork – the green reflective eyes – the wisps of soft fur and whiskers – the dreamy florals – make this a very special collectible piece of artwork.
To make this 63″ x 63″ quilt design, you will start with our charming 43″ x 44″ exclusive digital panel. You will fussy cut large realistic blossoms for the corner blocks. We’ve used a Turquoise lozenge-shaped ombre border inset to give a luminous quality, set against the Kona Solid Black.
PLUS – you’ll receive Free USA / 50% off INTL shipping when you order the fabrics for this exquisite quilt pattern (orders $100 and over, no coupon needed).
Order the pattern as configured, or customize it to your liking with any of our thousands of fabrics. Just place your desired fabrics in your Wish List, and these fabrics will appear in the Fabric Selector below the pattern.
I’ve been on a quest for 35 years. My goal is to fill out my stash with every color, every shade and tint and hue and value so that when I need something for a project, it is (somewhere) on my shelf. Lately I’ve been filling in the last few slots from the eQuilter scrap bin. As I get ready for a weeklong artist retreat, I have a sense of urgency.
As new color trends and unique color combinations catch my eye, I have to review my stash. A little Plum here, a little Marigold there, and maybe a little Deep Teal and Sprout Green too. Am I done yet? Never. That is half the fun of being a quilter, if I dare say so myself. It is the eternal quest for the perfect color. It never ends, but it is a noble quest.
For those of you on a similar quest, we try to help out by cutting our own special collections of fat quarters in house. I am the one who initiates a new fat quarter packet, and chooses the colors that go into these collections that will hopefully scratch that particular chromatic itch we all get now and then.
This week I am featuring another quilt from the Modern Quilt Guild’s festival – QuiltCon. This cheerful quilt (upper left quadrant of collage above) is more fun than a Spring garden, with pieced blocks that resemble an ombre gradient. It illustrates a warm analogous color story that warms us like sunshine and tulips…chirping robins and giggling babies.
Heather Akerberg is the quiltmaker for this piece, which she titled “Multitudes”. Karen McTavish also helped with the machine quilting, and Heather added some hand quilting.
Heather writes: “Our unique experiences, thoughts, beliefs and memories all inform who we are at any given moment. We are multitudes. Utilizing simple shapes, this quilt explores how our identities are layered and varied. Using shifts in value and hue, vibrancy and depth are created. ‘Multitudes’ was constructed using a mix of foundation paper and traditional piecing with a mix of shot cotton and quilting cotton, mostly from my scrap bins.”
You can see a larger image of this quilt on this page.
If you have not subscribed to my artist blog yet, follow this link to see my latest process post about a Fierce Mama Bear art quilt, made for the SAQA Spotlight auction.
Sharing your love of fabric… Luana and Paul
* Quilt by Heather Akerberg is set im a collage of Fat Quarter images, available now at eQuilter.com
Travel/Quilt Dates: April 7-12 – Allegre Retreat, Gateway CO May 1-7 – London & Canterbury, UK August – World Wilderness Congress, Rapid City SD December – Textile & Costume Tour – Italy
Well, the time has come to clear out our Artisan Chocolates for the season, and I know from experience they go fast. Place your order now for 30% off. If you order 5 chocolate bars and a spool of thread, we won’t tell anybody. Or, you can order 5 spools of thread and one bar of chocolate for a low-cal dopamine hit. *giggle*
I want to make sure you don’t miss these special new products this week:
This week I am busy prepping for a one-week art quilt retreat in SW Colorado – the Allegre Retreat which was founded by Katie Pasquini Masopust. I met her 20+ years ago at Art Quilt Tahoe. I am finally going to check off this bucket list item, and hopefully get a lot of work done there. I am not in a class, but I am doing an independent study retreat. One of the teachers is Susan Carlson, who we had scheduled to teach here in 2020, but had to cancel (along with Paula Nadelstern) because of the pandemic. Sigh…..
Today I was out at the Wild Animal Sanctuary in Keenesburg, gathering signatures for a ballot initiative to ban Trophy Hunting of Big Cats in Colorado. On the walk back to my car, I saw the new residents: beautiful silver foxes who were rescued from a fur farm. eQuilter is a “Founder” – we have donated to their huge wildlife refuge in SE Colorado where lions and tigers and bears live in outdoor acreage after being rescued from horrendous abusive situations. They have started a Horse Refuge for mustangs that are rounded up destined for a tragic demise – but are saved at the auction and sent to the refuge to run free again.
If you would like advance notice of my Textile & Costume tour in Italy in early December, contact Customer Service and they will put you on that list.
sharing your love for fabric, Luana and Paul
Travel/Quilt Dates: April 7-12 Allegre Retreat May 1-7 – England August – World Wilderness Congress December – Textile/Costume Tour – Italy
Celebrate the arrival of Spring with this adorable collection of baby animals, in this week’s Free Quilt Pattern. Each block is a sweet portrait of a little baby animal, featuring a bright-eyed lamb, fuzzy pink piglet, soft yellow chicks, carrot-nibbling bunny, curious calf, and sassy kid. (goat)
To make this 63″ x 69″ quilt, you will start with two 24″ x 44″ Barnyard Babies block panels, piecing blocks to make 3 rows in the central section. Join blocks with coordinating blender. Use matching Barnyard Stripe to create border, with outer border of blue blender. Finish with coordinating red paisley print for the binding.
This a fun Nap/Lap quilt for a retired farmer, maybe a wall hanging in the barn, or a delightful gift for a new baby. Also makes a great gift for your vet who will be delivering some of these baby animals this spring!
PLUS – you’ll receive Free USA / 50% off INTL shipping when you order the fabrics for this exquisite quilt pattern (orders $100 and over, no coupon needed).
Order the pattern as configured, or customize it to your liking with any of our thousands of fabrics. Just place your desired fabrics in your Wish List, and these fabrics will appear in the Fabric Selector below the pattern.
This week, for you avid Midweek newsletter readers, I am giving you a little sneak peak of a beloved collection we just got back in stock: Caryl Bryler Fallert-Gentry’s “Gradations” which is 24 different color combinations of Ombre prints.
If you have ever played around with gradient prints, you know that every cut of these fabrics yields several different colors and/or values, so one colorway is like 4 or 5 colors or shades. Gradient prints have been embraced by Modern Quilters for the luminous quality they add to a quilt. Contemporary quilters love them because they give a 3-D effect.
We’ve cut all 24 colors into 5″ strips and packaged them in-house for a palette-stretcher precut that will expand your color options in a heartbeat.
Today I am featuring this delightful quilt from the Maximalism exhibit at QuiltCon. As you may recall, I wrote an article about Maximalism awhile back, so I was excited to see this batch of quilts!
This quilt is by Linda Hungerford, and is titled “Feelin’ Groovy“. (center image in the collage above.)
Linda writes:
“An abandoned box of already-pieced quarter circle, and triangle-in-a-square blocks triggered this design that needed more. So, to meet a Central Florida MQG Challenge of using half-rectangle triangle (HRT) blocks in a quilt, I made two sizes of them using only stripes and solids.”
Part of what makes this busy quilt so fun and eye-catching is the juxtaposition of Solid Brights with Black-and-White stripes. For those of you who have attended my trend lectures, you know this Black-and-White-and-Color trend is ongoing and mutating. As a result, we have been expanding our selection of Black and White stripes because they are so fun to work with – give it a try!
If you are looking for more gradient prints, go to our Color Palette and scroll down – there are 4 different color categories of these Ombre fabrics.
Just in case you missed the Wednesday e-newsletter, I now have photo albums up for both the DAR Museum opening of “Sewn in America”, and QuiltCon exhibits.
For many years I’ve been researching a very unique Textile & Costume tour in Italy, and right now I’m putting together a holiday season trip (including Christmas Markets) around the 2nd week of December. I’d like to give our avid eQuilter fans first crack at this amazing tour, so if you’d like to have a 48 hour advance notice to reserve a place when registration opens, contact Customer Service and get on the list! This is not a tour for those of you who have never been to Italy before. It is more an in-depth study (and celebration!) of textile history and costumes. It is going to be AWESOME. There just might be some wine tasting involved….
This morning I attended a live streaming performance of Gounod’s ‘Romeo et Julette’ from the Met in New York. It was a gorgeous costume piece, with 18th century style, written by a 19th century French composer. The costume designer Catherine Zuber did a fantastic job. I know that many of you are not only avid quilters, but also costume (and opera) aficionados…because if you love textiles it is hard not to love costumes and historic fabrics.
There were several transmission interruptions during the first half (the image on the screen froze) and during the intermission the executive director of the Met came on and apologized, saying they were having severe thunderstorms and torrential rain which interrupted the satellite transmission….and he blamed it on climate change. I see there is still a flood watch in place. Oh the times, they are a changin’…..
For those of you who attended the online SAQA webinar on embellishments, we are highlighting our Milliner needles this week. We also carry the Perle 8 cotton embroidery threads in gorgeous color collections, and those handy heavy-duty thimbles that are beloved by handwork experts. Enjoy!
sharing your love for fabric, Luana and Paul
Travel/Quilt Dates: April 7-12 Allegre Retreat May 1-7 – England December – Textile/Costume Tour – Italy
Today is the first Full Day of Spring which is always a cause for celebration here in Colorado. Our mountains are cloaked in snow, but our bulbs are pushing up through the ground, and the tree buds are swelling with our sunny mild weather. I am including a collage of a new collection of Sea Turtle/Ocean prints that just arrived this week….with warmer weather I think about visiting the coast later this year!
In Washington DC the cherry blossoms are at peak bloom, and I have just come back from an opening reception at the DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution) Museum which is a couple blocks from the White House. I was there for the first day of “Sewn in America” which will run through December 31.
As you enter the exhibit, you read this description:
“Sewn objects surround us. They clothe us from birth, cover our bodies day and night, furnish our living spaces, line our coffins. Until recently, nearly every woman knew how to sew – knowledge imparted in childhood and employed through a lifetime.
Without formal art training, women used needle arts to express themselves. In quilts, embroidery, and other fancy work projects, they beautified their surroundings, made gifts of love and friendship, expressed emotion, proclaimed their identity, and conveyed their support for causes.
Sewn in America examines the way in which American women (and men) from the 18th and 19th centuries learned and deployed their needle skills to furnish their households, earn livings, and express themselves, with contemporary examples of the themes explored.”
My quilt “Stardust Mothers” is one of the contemporary examples chosen for this historic 2024 exhibit, and I also wrote a chapter about Craftivism in the companion book. If you are planning a trip to our nation’s capital this year, please stop to visit the DAR to see this exhibit, and all their other quilts on display from all the states, over the last 200+ years.
Our Fabulous Floral Kitty panel displays charm and elegance, dressed in a classic Victorian hat. This week’s exclusive Free Quilt Design is full of gorgeous details and a captivating kitty surrounded by graceful, painterly flowers.
To make this 58″ x 64″ quilt design, you will start with our ever-popular 43″ x 44″ digital panel. The central masterpiece is framed by mitering our detailed wood grain print, and then bordered with a deep Amethyst Hoffman Hand Dye.
PLUS – you’ll receive Free USA / 50% off INTL shipping when you order the fabrics for this exquisite quilt pattern (orders $100 and over, no coupon needed).
Order the pattern as configured, or customize it to your liking with any of our thousands of fabrics. Just place your desired fabrics in your Wish List, and these fabrics will appear in the Fabric Selector below the pattern.
When you receive this email, I’ll be flying back from Washington DC, where I attended the opening reception for ‘Sewn in America – Making-Meaning-Memory’ at the DAR Museum. My quilt ‘Stardust Mothers’ is hanging in this exhibit, next to a quilt made by fellow artist Dr Carolyn Mazloomi. The exhibit will be open through December 31st. I hope you can see this beautiful exhibit if you are visiting DC, which has both historic quilts and contemporary quilts illustrating ‘craftivism’.
You may have heard that we got about a foot of heavy wet snow on Thursday. I was supposed to fly to DC Thursday morning, but was able to switch my flight to Wednesday to get out of town ahead of the storm. Here in Washington, the magnolia trees and daffodils are in full blossom, and the cherry blossoms are just starting to open. DC is about one week from ‘peak blossom’. Of course with the cherry blossoms come the huge crowds. They seem to get bigger every year. I am getting out of town just in time.
I also learned this week that my ‘Uncompahgre Fritillary’ quilt has been accepted into the SAQA ‘Camouflage’exhibit, which will open at the Intl Quilt Festival in Houston this Fall. Also just finished an article on color trends, that will be in the July/Aug issue of Quiltmaker, which we will of course have in stock in a a few months.
Do you remember the Bicentennial celebrations in 1976? That is the year that I graduated from high school. It was also the Centennial year for our state of Colorado. When I went to the AQSG seminar last year, I heard a lecture by a historian studying a Bicentennial quilt from 1976. Well guess what? We have the semiquincentennial coming up: 2026 will be the 250th anniversary of the American experiment. Start working on your semiquincentennial quilt now, and maybe in 2076 somebody will give a lecture on the history of YOUR quilt! If you have a centennial or bicentennial quilt in your family, send us a picture and I might know a historian or curator who would like to know more about your historic quilt.
The quilts we make today will potentially become part of history some day. Be sure to label your quilts today, for those who are curious tomorrow. Always put a label on the back of your quilt, with your name, date, town, and any other pertinent information. Was the quilt made to celebrate a wedding or a baby? Was it for a kid going off to college, or graduating? Is it a friendship quilt, a memorial quilt, or to document another important event in your life? Some day, that information will fascinate someone admiring your quilt. For myself, I am starting to plan a semiquincentennial quilt!
sharing your love for fabric, Luana and Paul
Travel/Quilt Dates: April 7-12 Allegre Retreat May 1-7 – England
The remarkable panel celebrates a woman with shamanic headdress, while an explosion of color and shadow brings life to the face paint, feathers, and flames. The center panel is framed by a mitered Native American blanket print, and bordered with solid black.
This 65″ x 65″ quilt displays a powerful image wherever it hangs … or make this quilt for someone with connections to Native Tribes or a love of the colorful beauty of the Southwest.
PLUS – you’ll receive Free USA / 50% off INTL shipping when you order the fabrics for this exquisite quilt pattern (orders $100 and over, no coupon needed).
Order the pattern as configured, or customize it to your liking with any of our thousands of fabrics. Just place your desired fabrics in your Wish List, and these fabrics will appear in the Fabric Selector below the pattern.
