To make this 60″ x 68″ quilt design, you will start with our exclusive 36″ x 44″ panel. Then piece the set-in diamond inner border with Steampunk pocket watches and ornate keys, and Kona Solid Black. You’ll also use our exclusive slate wall print for the inner and outer borders.
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.
Sometimes the news of the week is so blinding and incomprehensible, there are no words. My heart hurts. My head hurts. I just don’t understand how humans are capable of so much destruction in more than one place. The fact that children are caught up in the violence more than ever, just says that the human race needs to take a hard look at the hatred and racism that has brought all of us to this place. It not happening to ‘others’ somewhere on the other side of the world. These are our children also. These Jewish children, these Palestinian children, these Ukrainian and Azerbaijan children, they belong to all of us. We cannot just turn off the TV and pretend it is not happening. All I can say is, we all need to speak up for peace and healing, because nobody wins in war.
I am at a quilt retreat in the Colorado Rocky Mountains today. It is peaceful here. The air is clear and chilly, and there is a dusting of snow on the mountain peak towering outside our windows. The friendship and fellowship of our quilt group is a balm, but it does not take away the pain that any empathic person, any human being must feel knowing about the current conflicts. The earthquake in Afghanistan would normally be at the top of the headlines, but it is eclipsed by war. Know that if you choose Doctors Without Borders as you check out, your 2% of your purchase will be heading to one of these humanitarian disasters.
Thank you for supporting our family-owned business, and our commitment to help those in need. We have surpassed $2 million raised for our list of non-profits, and we continue to send money to help those in need.
Stitching is one of the only ways I know, that I can clear and calm my mind at times like this. For those of you who are also empathetic to these events, I invite you to join me … to pray for peace and some kind of cease fire. When we send our monthly eQuilter donations out, it is also a comfort that somewhere, someone suffering will receive help.
Travel to the back country of Northern forests with this week’s Free Quilt Pattern, with a scenic panel featuring a landscape-within-a-landscape and a Brown Bear on the move.
To make this 62″ x 51″ exclusive quilt design, you will start with the 33″ x 44″ Hoffman panel. Piece the Bear Claw corner blocks and complete the borders with weathered wood paneling and tree bark prints, a Hoffman Hand-Dye, and Kona Solid Black.
Brown Bears are fat Coastal Grizzly Bears who feast on up to 90,000 calories of spawning salmon per day, during the salmon run. Have you heard of Fat Bear Week? (The winner was just announced) This is a fun countdown to pick the chonkiest Brown Bear in Alaska. This year’s winner is a Katmai female bear named Grazer. Long live Mama Bears!
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 I am sharing another paper-pieced quilt from the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham UK. This very clever original quilt (Top-Center) highlights the story of the Fox and Hare, with a vertical mirror image featuring the fox on the top, and the leaping upside-down hare on the bottom section, separated by colorful interlocking Star blocks.
Maker: Leah Walker “Turning of the Seasons – The Fox and the Hare” Original design, celebrating a beautiful and whimsical celebration of the British countryside.
We’ll have our first snow in the Foothills Thursday, so when I drive up to Allenspark for a guild quilt retreat Friday and Saturday, I’ll be relishing the snowy peaks of the Continental Divide. My Red Maple has taken a dramatic turn in the last couple days, and I know our new puppy Rosie will be romping in crackly fragrant piles of leaves very soon.
Sharing your love of fabric… Luana and Paul
* The photo above was taken by Luana Rubin at the Festival of Quilts in the Uk, in August 2023. It is framed by a selection of fabrics now in stock at eQuilter.com
To make this 60″ x 68″ quilt design, you will start with our exclusive 35″ x 44″ digital printed panel vignette. You will piece the set-in diamond inner border with Steampunk pocket watches and ornate keys, and Kona Solid Black. Use more of our exclusive Steampunk collection to finish the outer border with Steampunk Gears.
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.
As you may know, eQuilter has had an exclusive line of digital printed fabrics for years now, with hundreds of products in our Rubin Design Studio collections. We got another shipment this week, and if you are a Cat Lover I want to make sure you check out the awesome Black Cats, and the absolutely stunning huge Kitty panel with this lush floral hat. Our staff is already going nuts over the panel, so check it out before it blows out of here!
This afternoon I hosted a group of septuagenarian Girl Scouts having a 50th year reunion in Boulder. They chose to come and have a tour of eQuilter and my studio, as part of their reunion. I am so honored! They were in Girl Scouts together in California (earning sewing and craft badges) a few years before I was in Girl Scouts in So Cal. I was informed there was even a Textile badge, where they went to visit a textile factory!
Tonight as this newsletter is going out, I am going to see Patrick Stewart (Captain Picard) speak here at CU Boulder, sponsored by our local bookstore. You may recall that in December 2019 I made a quick trip to London on Election Day (got a half price air ticket) and was able to attend Sir Ian McKellan’s one man show on the West End. He spoke at length about his friendship with Stewart, so I can’t wait to hear the other end of the story! For many years I had a 6-foot cardboard cutout of Captain Picard (Star Trek) in my office. He finally collapsed from all the accessories I looped over his bald cardboard head. Anyway, this Trekkie nerd is super excited!
This breathtaking Autumn scene features the magical light of the Golden Hour, with a luminous glow filtering through red, orange and yellow leaves. A herd of deer pause to survey the viewer (you!) with a harvest scene in the background. This is one of our favorite scenic panels…so atmospheric with shimmering fields and mauve shadows.
To make this 53″ x 53″ quilt design, you will start with the 36″ x 44″ digital-printed panel by the brilliant wildlife artist Abraham Hunter…one of our favorite designers! You will create the pieced border in this eQuilter exclusive design, with 3 Hoffman Hand-Dyes and 2 blender prints.
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.
Tonight I am sharing an image of this stunning paper-pieced quilt made by Helen Creasey – and exhibited at the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham UK in August. This large-scale (life size) mermaid portrait was designed, constructed and machine quilted by Helen. It is titled “Reaching” and perhaps is a metaphor that captures the feeling of rising from the depths and stretching towards the light. It is made with solid cottons and beautifully stitched on a sit-down longarm machine.
This weekend I was in Louisville Kentucky for the American Quilt Study Group’s annual seminar. I have generally been more interested in contemporary quilts, rather than vintage or historic quilts, but as time goes by the quilts I admired in the 90s have become part of quilt history. It was fascinating to be immersed in this other world of quilt appreciation. Their studious presentations on textile history, and the evolution of quilt pattern designs reminded me that some day my own quilts will pass into the oeuvre of quilt history. The amount of time and energy invested in identifying and confirming the provenance of these quilts, is a reminder to us all, to label and document our own quilts!
You may recall that M.J. Kinman has taught here in the eQuilter classroom (pre-pandemic) and we have carried her Gemstone patterns, kits, and thread sets. It turns out she lives 10 minutes from where the seminar was held, so I was able to visit her home, meet her husband and dogs, and see her studio. (And – shhh! – a sneak peek at her next big project.) I also had an exciting moment in her back yard – seeing Red Cardinals in person for the first time in my life. We have carried so many Red Cardinal fabrics over the last 24 years, but we never see them here in Colorado. I was thrilled!
On Saturday I attended a luncheon and heard Shelley Zegart talk about her years promoting Kentucky quilt history. You may be familiar with her 9-part PBS documentary “Why Quilts Matter”. I grabbed a seat at a table and found myself next to quilt historian and author Barbara Brackman, who pulled out a small metal lunchbox of sewing supplies, and proceeded to hand-stitch an applique block. We engaged in some quilty gossip (as one does) before I had to dash out and make my way to the airport. It is hard to leave home for more than a couple days, with a new puppy at home!
Sharing your love of fabric… Luana and Paul
* The photo above was taken by Luana Rubin at the Festival of Quilts in the Uk, in August 2023. It is framed by a selection of fabrics now in stock at eQuilter.com
Fall is gently blowing through the trees and into our neighborhoods, which means the Holiday season cannot be too far behind. Perhaps you are already dreaming of that first snowfall, and those winter months stitching by a crackling fire with a mug of hot cocoa. Maybe with a festive dollop of whipped cream on top?
This magical Free Quilt Pattern captures the breathless excitement of that most wonderful time of year, with a sparkling Christmas tree on the edge of a forest, and dancing Northern Lights filling the sky. This quilt design has been created to give the illusion of looking out of a window at night, to the illuminated landscape beyond.
To make this 63″ x 67″ exclusive quilt design, you will start with the Christmas tree panel, then add Black and Lavender Hoffman Hand-Dyes with the Glowing Forest print, to construct the dramatic borders. Finish the binding with a Northern Lights print.
Our Holiday Categories are fully stocked now but remember these are seasonal prints, which means they will come and go as we get closer to Christmas. If you see collectible holiday-themed panels or coordinates that you love, don’t wait or they may be gone for good! We try to keep your favorites restocked but when the manufacturer reaches the end of the print run, that’s it folks.
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.
Today I am writing to you from Louisville Kentucky, where I’ve been attend the AQSG annual seminar (American Quilt Study Group). I am pleasantly surprised at how many people I know at this event! My focus tends to be more on contemporary quilts, and this group has historically focused more on antique/vintage/historic quilts. However as I get older and this group is studying quilts overlapping with my own story, it has become more relevant to me. For instance today I attended a presentation about a quilt that was made in the Seventies – each block made by a different woman – addressing a variety of women’s issues of the day. As you can imagine, many of those issues are still with us today. I graduated from high school in 1976 so this quilt made by a group of unidentified women, really spoke to me.
I was delighted to visit with museum directors, quilt collectors, quilt historians, magazine publishers and authors at this event. Tonight I sat next to Teresa Duryea Wong, author of one of our most popular books this summer – “Sewing & Survival: Native American Quilts 1880-2022“. I do appreciate those who put in the time to study a topic, and put it all down in a book or magazine, to share with the rest of us. Perhaps you are like me – I am just a sponge for learning new things – especially about quilts! So it is quite delicious to take a deep dive into another tributary of this constantly flowing art and craft that we love so dearly. In the Show-and-Tell tonight, we all marveled at the vintage quilt next to the beautiful reproduction quilt that had an extra flourish of appliqued flowers and leaves around the border. (You can see these 2 Carolina Lily quilts, and others from this event, on my personal Facebook page.)
After I shared my quilt “Stardust Mothers” on the cover of the German magazine ‘Patchwork Professional’, we received requests to stock the magazine. That shipment of limited copies from Germany just arrived yesterday, and if you snap up a copy, be sure to check out the lovely article about my artwork and our company. Don’t read German? You can use Google Translate on your smartphone to translate! This is the magazine that refers to me as “Powerfrau” on the cover, which tickles me pink. I have formally studied 6 languages in my lifetime, and German was the first one. I was a summer exchange student to Germany when I was 15. In Hong Kong (when I studied Cantonese) my room-mate was a German-speaking Austrian couture patternmaker, who was the NYC patternmaker for Halston, the Hong Kong head patternmaker for Oscar de la Renta, and other big name designers in the 70s and 80s. She had a Bernina but wouldn’t let me touch it – ha! Took me 25 years to get my first Bernina but it was worth the wait. I hope you also have a machine that you love, and I hope you have time to sew this weekend!
