That Golden Glow

Posted on October 21, 2023 by Luana

We have had one of those glorious Colorado Fall weeks, with brilliant yellow, orange and red foliage against intensely clear blue skies with mild temperatures. I hope you have been enjoying some of your own gorgeous Autumn weather as well. In couple weeks rain and wind will blow all the leaves from the trees, so the Trick-or-Treaters can shuffle through crunchy piles of leaves as they go door to door on Halloween. I know many of you are busy sewing last minute costumes for your kiddos.

This morning I woke up to an other-worldly golden glow in our bedroom. The sun had risen up in that clear blue sky, shining down on our Golden Locust, Ash, Linden and Maple trees in our back yard….and the warm glow suffused the room and awakened me to a dreamlike vision. But it was real! When you work with color every day, these ethereal moments of color magic take on a feeling of heightened senses, and you carry it throughout your day. We hope that as you work with our colorful fabrics, you have a similar experience.

Congratulations to all the Colorado quilters and textile artists featured in the new Colorado issue of Quiltfolk Magazine. Paul and I are so delighted to be included. You will find our profile on pages 100-105.

Are you going to Quilt Festival in Houston? eQuilter is sponsoring 3 exhibits, including the “Women’s Voices” quilts. I will be present in the exhibit on Thursday from 11 am to 1 pm to sign the catalog and talk about our experience at the Clinton Presidential Center last December, when they hosted an artist reception during the Women’s Voices conference. Hope to see you there.

sharing your love for fabric,
Luana and Paul

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.

Travel/Quilt Calendar:
Oct 27 – Nov 3 – Quilt Market/Festival – Houston TX
(Artist Speaker in “Women’s Voices” exhibit on Thurs Nov 2)

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That Golden Glow

Posted on October 21, 2023 by Luana

We have had one of those glorious Colorado Fall weeks, with brilliant yellow, orange and red foliage against intensely clear blue skies with mild temperatures. I hope you have been enjoying some of your own gorgeous Autumn weather as well. In couple weeks rain and wind will blow all the leaves from the trees, so the Trick-or-Treaters can shuffle through crunchy piles of leaves as they go door to door on Halloween. I know many of you are busy sewing last minute costumes for your kiddos.

This morning I woke up to an other-worldly golden glow in our bedroom. The sun had risen up in that clear blue sky, shining down on our Golden Locust, Ash, Linden and Maple trees in our back yard….and the warm glow suffused the room and awakened me to a dreamlike vision. But it was real! When you work with color every day, these ethereal moments of color magic take on a feeling of heightened senses, and you carry it throughout your day. We hope that as you work with our colorful fabrics, you have a similar experience.

Congratulations to all the Colorado quilters and textile artists featured in the new Colorado issue of Quiltfolk Magazine. Paul and I are so delighted to be included. You will find our profile on pages 100-105.

Are you going to Quilt Festival in Houston? eQuilter is sponsoring 3 exhibits, including the “Women’s Voices” quilts. I will be present in the exhibit on Thursday from 11 am to 1 pm to sign the catalog and talk about our experience at the Clinton Presidential Center last December, when they hosted an artist reception during the Women’s Voices conference. Hope to see you there.

sharing your love for fabric,
Luana and Paul

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.

Travel/Quilt Calendar:
Oct 27 – Nov 3 – Quilt Market/Festival – Houston TX
(Artist Speaker in “Women’s Voices” exhibit on Thurs Nov 2)

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Free Quilt Pattern – Sewing Journal

Posted on October 20, 2023 by Luana

Today we bring you a Free Quilt Pattern for J. Wecker Frisch’s wildly popular, vintage sewing-themed collection. These exquisite designs utilize antique drawings & loose-leaf paper to emulate the feeling of a collage or scrapbook.

To make this generous 68″ x 80″ eQuilter quilt design, you will combine the two 24″ x 44″ digital block panels with coordinating newspaper ad print and the stunning fashion model stripe. The black sashing makes these extraordinary prints really pop. This quilt announces your love of sewing in a vintage scrapbook style.

…from the ‘Sew Journal’ collection by J. Wecker Frisch for Riley Blake Designs.

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).

Don’t miss the ‘Steampunk Kitty‘ and ‘Haunted Halloween‘ quilt patterns!

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.

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

Luana and Paul Rubin

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Stitch by Stitch, Hand to Hand, Making a Circle

Posted on October 18, 2023 by Luana

This week I am reaching back to April, to share this beautiful quilt from the Pour l’Amour du Fils quilt festival in Nantes, France. This is from the Quilt Nihon gallery at this French quilt exhibit.

Best of Quilt Nihon 2021
Maker: Toyoko Nakajima – Japan
“Hand to Hand, Make a Circle”
Floral Medallion, hand-applique.

As you will see on my Asia Travel pages, I started going to the Tokyo Quilt Festival in 2010. I went every year until January 2020, which was the very last time this show was held at the Tokyo Dome. My memories of those years are so precious, and I am glad to have all the photos saved in my online albums. Sophie Quinn came with me to this last Tokyo show, and Covid chased us home. Hard to believe…that was almost 4 years ago. I also traveled to Japan in the 80s when I lived in Hong Kong and was working in the garment industry. Mostly I went to Osaka to source textiles. I miss traveling to Japan.

So you can imagine I was thrilled to see these Quilt Nihon pieces in France earlier this year!

If you have had the chance to admire the workmanship of Japanese quilters, I am sure you share my fascination and admiration of quilts created by these talented meticulous quilters. Here in the US, we have an internationally known award-winning Japanese quilter who continues to win prizes all around the world – Kumiko Frydl. She specializes in miniature quilts and she won the top prize in Birmingham this summer for her intricate mini-quilt. Kumiko has won so many top prizes for her tiny quilts, I have lost count. (Here we are together in Birmingham.)

The quilt above is a symphony of appliqued blossoms and trapunto stitching. The lighting was not ideal, but I hope the image gives you a sense of the mastery expressed in this piece. I will be at the Houston Quilt Festival in a couple weeks, and I promise I’ll be out there with my camera recording the new quilt masterpieces to share with you. It has been 4 years since I went to Houston and I am anxious to see the artistry on display.

eQuilter is sponsoring 3 special exhibits. I’ll tell you more about these next week.

Sharing your love of fabric…
Luana and Paul

* The photo above was taken by Luana Rubin at the Pour l’Amour du Fils quilt festival, in April 2023.

Visit eQuilter’s Instagram, Pinterest or TikTok pages for Color and Design ideas.

See Luana’s Flickr Photo Pages for travel images, review our blog, or follow us on Facebook.

Check out our Video pages for interviews and show reviews.

Travel/Quilt Calendar:
Oct 27 – Nov 3 – Quilt Market/Festival – Houston TX
(Thurs Nov 2 – 11 am to 1 pm – Women’s Voices exhibit.)

Luana’s Art & Activism lecture is now online.

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Free Quilt Pattern – Steampunk Kitty

Posted on October 15, 2023 by Luana

Our exclusive Steampunk collection shines again with this stylish Steampunk Kitty! Cat lovers will rejoice in Tonight’s Free Quilt Pattern, featuring an adorable feline with mechanically decorated top hat.

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.

…from the ‘Steampunk’ collection by the Rubin Design Studio, designed exclusively for eQuilter.

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).

Don’t miss the ‘Through the Forest Light‘ and ‘Haunted Halloween‘ quilt patterns!

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.

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

Luana and Paul Rubin

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A Sad Week

Posted on October 14, 2023 by Luana

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.

sharing your love for fabric,
Luana and Paul

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.

Travel/Quilt Calendar:
Oct 27 – Nov 3 – Quilt Market/Festival – Houston TX
(Artist Speaker in “Women’s Voices” exhibit on Thurs Nov 2)

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Free Quilt Pattern – Call of the Wild Grizzly Bear

Posted on October 13, 2023 by Luana

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.

Bear Fans:
See more Brown Bear images on Luana’s Alaska photo album!

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!

…from the ‘Call Of The Wild’ collection by Hoffman Fabrics.

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).

Don’t miss the ‘Through the Forest Light‘ and ‘Steampunk Portrait‘ quilt patterns!

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.

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

Luana and Paul Rubin

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Leah’s Fox and Hare

Posted on October 11, 2023 by Luana

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’ve set this quilt image in a collage border of Fox and Autumn-themed fabrics in stock now. You can see more of the FOQ quilts on my photo pages, and take a closer look at Leah’s quilt here.

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

Visit eQuilter’s Instagram, Pinterest or TikTok pages for Color and Design ideas.

See Luana’s Flickr Photo Pages for travel images, review our blog, or follow us on Facebook.

Check out our Video pages for interviews and show reviews.

Travel/Quilt Calendar:
Oct 27 – Nov 3 – Quilt Market/Festival – Houston TX

Luana’s Art & Activism lecture is now online.

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Free Quilt Pattern – Steampunk Portrait

Posted on October 8, 2023 by Luana

A luminous dreamy visage gazes out from a Steampunk collage in this phantasmagoria….a flight of fancy with rustic gears and spiraling tendrils emerging from a mysterious dark background.

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.

…from the ‘Steampunk’ collection by the Rubin Design Studio, designed exclusively for eQuilter.

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).

Don’t miss the ‘Through the Forest Light‘ and ‘Haunted Halloween‘ quilt patterns!

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.

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

Luana and Paul Rubin

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Cats, Girl Scouts & Capt Picard

Posted on October 7, 2023 by Luana

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!

sharing your love for fabric,
Luana and Paul

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.

Travel/Quilt Calendar:
Oct 27 – Nov 3 – Quilt Market/Festival – Houston TX
(Artist Speaker in “Women’s Voices” exhibit on Thurs Nov 2)

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