Stitching for Peace

Posted on June 14, 2023 by Luana

Do you believe that a quilt can be a prayer? I do. I have always felt that when we stitch a quilt with intention and love, the energy of those hopes and dreams are contained in the quilt like a prayer. It can be a quilt that you give as a gift, as a healing prayer. It can be a visual prayer, a request to the Universe, that we stitch into a quilt that will be seen and appreciated by others.

Last week at Quilt Canada, Peter Byrne had 9 quilts displayed, and he won all 3 awards in one category. One of his 9 quilts was this quilt, shown above with a backdrop of natural beauty. (A forest scene panel, in stock now.)

Peter is a modern quilter, but this quilt is somewhere between a contemporary art quilt, and a modern quilt. There is a bursting energy in this quilt, and when you read his artist statement you will understand his intention when he created this quilt.

“Regeneration” by Peter Byrne, quilted by Cathie Giambalvo

Artist Statement:
‘This quilt is a representational view of the Regeneration of Hope, growing in Ukraine. The divide between light and dark is Ukraine pushing back against the Russian occupancy and reclaiming their land and country. Amongst the rubble, a single seed sprouts new life and starts the miracle of Regeneration.’

Lets all stitch a prayer for peace this week, for both the Ukrainian and the Russian people. If you make a purchase from eQuilter this week, remember that 2% of all sales go to the charity of your choice, including Doctors Without Borders who are on the ground in Ukraine, assisting in this humanitarian crisis.

Sharing your love of 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, review our blog, or follow us on Facebook.

Check out our Video pages for interviews and show reviews.

Travel/Quilt Calendar:
July 4-12 – Helsinki & Savonlinna, Finland
August 18-24 – Bear Camp in Alaska (via Homer)
Sept 28-30 – AQSG Seminar – Louisville, KY

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Free Quilt Pattern – Couple in Paris

Posted on June 13, 2023 by Luana

This atmospheric image captures a romantic walk in the rain, with a misty sky and a famous Parisian view in the background.

To make this 43″ x 60″ framed quilt design, you will start with the 24″ x 44″ scenic panel. We love the pop of RED against the neutral shades of gray in the background scene, featuring the Eiffel Tower on a rainy day. We’ve added 3 Stonehenge textures, Kona Solid Black and a Red Hoffman Hand-Dye to create a dimensional frame around this romantic image.

There is also a soundtrack that comes to mind with this quilt, like “April in Paris”, “I Love Paris in the Springtime”, “Free Man in Paris”, of course the famous “Sous le Ciel de Paris” by Edith Piaf.

Whether you have poignant memories of a past visit to the City of Light, or you dream of visiting the Eiffel Tower and Champs Elysees, this quilt captures the imagination and spins a beautiful daydream. Allons-y!

* Please be aware – the Walk in the Rain panel is a special reprint we requested from the manufacturer. We consider this a collector item, because it has sold out so fast previously, and there is a limited availability in this precious reprint.

…from the ‘Artworks’ collection by Ruane Manning for Quilting Treasures.

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 ‘Golden Pals‘ and ‘Steampunk Jewels‘ 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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Free Quilt Pattern – Vitamin Sea

Posted on June 11, 2023 by Luana

Sometimes you just need to spend some time by the Ocean, also known as getting some “Vitamin Sea”. The sparkling jeweltones of sky and water, along with the fresh salty air and the sound of the waves, are memories that stay with us for months and years.

This week’s Free Quilt Pattern captures the colors and ambiance of a coastal vacation, with spiraling seashells and abstract waves in cool aquatic hues.

To make this 61″ x 77″ quilt design, you will start with the central abstract 30″ x 44″ seashell panel, with details like starfish and coral shapes. You will construct the rippling corner blocks from 3 coordinating marble prints, and join together with the wavy stripe, then finish with a dark blue marble texture.

Whether this is a small bed coverlet, or a large couch/nap quilt, soothing dreams of mermaids and whalesong reverie are flowing beneath this serene quilt….

…from the ‘Vitamin Sea’ collection by Deborah Edwards and Melanie Samra for Northcott 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 ‘Santa’s Christmas Quilt‘ and ‘Steampunk Jewels‘ 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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Flying Home From Halifax

Posted on June 10, 2023 by Luana

Today I am writing to you from Halifax Nova Scotia, where I’ve been attending Quilt Canada. This is one of my favorite shows because there is so much talent up here, and often the Canadian winners end up coming to Houston and other US shows, and winning more prizes. By the time I got here the fires around Halifax were all under control, and it was raining, so there were no air quality issues during my trip. I am flying home through Newark today so I’ll see the bad air quality there, which is the same problem we’ve had in Colorado the last few summers. Wildfire smoke drifting from other states has been an increasing issue, and it has caused respiratory issues in Colorado, so if you are having a bad air quality day stay indoors! (Sorry, that’s the Mom part of me coming out.)

This has been a funny trip because the E key on my laptop came loose, so I’ve been struggling to keep it in place. You never realize how much you use the E key until it works only half the time. Fortunately the auto-correct picks up some of the resulting typos! And Paul will fix the rest – haha.

In my newsletter last Wednesday, I featured the work of Sue Sherman from last year. (“Dear Humans”) Guess what? She won Best of Show here in Halifax. Give me a few days, and I’ll start posting photos from this show. I will also have a video interview with Sue about her beautiful quilts. Watch for that in the upcoming e-newsletter this week. I’ve heard comments that there were more art quilts in this year’s show, and I am also hearing that art quilts are trending up around the world. After you make a lot of baby quilts and bed quilts, that is a predictable evolution … wanting to design one’s own quilt. I am always excited to see more individual creativity being expressed through textiles. As always, we hope that our variety of products supports your own creative journey. Send us photos of your favorite finished projects made with eQuilter fabrics, and we’ll share them with other eQuilter fans on our social media!

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:
July 4-12 – Helsinki & Savonlinna, Finland
August 18-24 – Bear Camp – Homer Alaska
Sept 28-30 – AQSG Seminar – Louisville, KY

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Free Quilt Pattern – Santa’s Christmas Quilt

Posted on June 9, 2023 by Luana

If you want to know what Santa does late at night when the Elves’ Workshop closes and Mrs. Claus goes to bed….he is up making perfect hand-quilting stitches!

This week’s exclusive eQuilter Free Quilt Pattern features this popular digital-printed panel of jolly St Nick finishing a lovely pieced quilt for those long cold winter nights at the North Pole. Maybe this one is a Christmas present for Mrs. Claus?

To make this 60″ x 72″ quilt design, you will start with a 36″ x 44″ panel, then piece four Rubin Studio blenders to make the corner snowflakes and pieced borders.

……from the ‘Christmas Holiday’ collection.

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 Jewels‘ and ‘Dream Catcher Owl‘ 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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Dear Humans – Get Your Act Together

Posted on June 7, 2023 by Luana

Today was a travel day. Door to door it was 13 hours, but I made it to Halifax Nova Scotia. It is cool and rainy here, and the fires from the last week are now under control. I am excited to attend the awards ceremony of Quilt Canada on Wednesday night. It will be live streamed at 7:30 Atlantic Time (that is one hour later than Eastern Time) on the Canadian Quilters Association Facebook page. I’ll be up on stage at some point giving out at least one cash award, sponsored by eQuilter.

Since I haven’t seen any quilts here yet, I wanted to share the work of this extraordinary Canadian quilter. I photographed Sue Sherman’s large quilt at Quilt Canada last summer in Vancouver, then I featured it in my Quilting Arts TV segment on Canadian Quilters … and then this quilt won the Master Award for Thread Artistry at Houston last fall. You can see a video of that QA TV segment here.

Sue’s artist statement reads:
“The animals are sending a message to humans, offering their opinion about the state of things. Humans fill the sky with empty talk about addressing habitat loss and climate change, but don’t really do anything to help.”

This is a 94″ x 64″ whole cloth quilt painted with thickened dyes on PFD cotton. It is an original design based on photos taken by Sue, after a trip to Kenya. She was interviewed by Bob Ruggiero of Quilts Inc about her work, last fall. You can see that video here.

I am meeting Sue for the first time in-person tomorrow, to discuss our mutual interest of Art and Activism. (and Opera!) If you also love wild animals, you can check out our large category of Wild Animal prints, and then choose The Wild Foundation as your 2% donation during the checkout process.

We have a new interview with Bob this week, where I am discussing the ‘Celebration of Color’ contest and exhibit, which is also sponsored by eQuilter. You can see this exhibit at this summer’s Long Beach Quilt Festival, and it will also be at the Houston Quilt Festival in the Fall. You can see the video interview (including color trends) here.

I am here as a sponsor, to meet with Canadian quilter friends, and of course to photograph the show!
The “E” key on my laptop just broke tonight so that is going make for an interesting wk!

Sharing your love of fabric…and color…
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, review our blog, or follow us on Facebook.

Check out our Video pages for interviews and show reviews.

Travel/Quilt Calendar:
July 4-12 – Helsinki & Savonlinna, Finland
August 18-24 – Bear Camp in Alaska (via Homer)
Sept 28-30 – AQSG Seminar – Louisville, KY

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Free Quilt Pattern – Tina’s Garden

Posted on June 6, 2023 by Luana

These lush juicy blossoms are so realistic, you’ll want to lean over and smell the imaginary fragrance of the garden! This week’s Free Quilt Pattern captures the full blown opulence of a summer garden’s colors with exquisitely detailed photo-realistic flower images.

To make this 72″ x 72″ quilt design, you will start with the central 42″ x 44″ Big Flower panel. Then you will layer a coordinating allover floral, Kona Solid Black, and the matching floral stripe to create the engineered border.

This is a quick and easy quilt design that makes for a great Summer gift or Summertime Nap quilt. If you are a freemotion quilter, we can imagine quilting around the shapes of the big flowers, then filling the solid background with a dense quilting design. Have fun with this one!
(And maybe pick up some more Black thread.)

…from the ‘Tina’s Garden’ collection by Tina Leto for Clothworks.

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 Jewels‘ and ‘Dream Catcher Owl‘ 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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Free Quilt Pattern – Dream Catcher Owl

Posted on June 4, 2023 by Luana

A mysterious owl emerges from the shadows to take you on a magical flight through Dreamland, in this week’s Free Quilt Pattern. This is one of our exclusive blockbuster customer favorites that has just come back into stock – grab it before it disappears into the darkness again!

To make this mesmerizing 52″ x 65″ quilt design, you will start with our exclusive Rubin 30″ x 44″ digital panel, featuring an enigmatic glowing Owl and a shimmering Dream Catcher with feathers. Piece the border with our coordinating Golden Dragonfly design, and the smaller Owl coordinate, plus Solid Black to give the illusion of luminous golden light emerging from the darkness.

Is it a dream? An Owl Shaman? An ancient wise spirit?
Only you can say Whoooooooo those eyes belong to…..

…from the ‘Inspiration’ 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 ‘Steampunk Jewels‘ and ‘Call of the Wild Winter Wolf‘ 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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Buzzing with Creativity

Posted on June 3, 2023 by Luana

Happy Pride Month! Our shelves are bursting with Rainbow and Pride fabric designs.

Sunday June 4 is National Hug Your Cat Day – but I am sure you were going to snuggle with your kitty anyway today, right? If you miss out – don’t worry – International Cat Day is August 8.

My presentation on “Art and Activism” at Quilt National (Dairy Barn Art Center in Athens Ohio) is now available to view online at this link. It is a one-hour power point lecture for those who want to make a difference with their art practice. I hope it will inspire many of you to express your emotions through your textile art. (Watch on a larger screen if you can, not a phone screen, to appreciate the images!)

While I was at the quilt festival in Nantes France, I spent time with Herma de Ruiter who posts a Daily Stitch Practice “Going Round in Circles” on her social media. She uses Wonderfil Perle 8 embroidery threads which come in a fabulous range of solid and variegated colors in several boxed collections. And so, I just had to get some for our eQuilter customers!

They are in stock now, including the Alison Glass collections. I have added photos to my Nantes gallery, from Herma’s exhibit, so you have an inspiration for this wonderful line of hand-embroidery threads. Also check out Gilliam Travis’ embroidered quilts on this page, with whimsical Fair Isle and Mitten blocks. Of course we carry a wide selection of needles for your hand-embroidery adventures.

Now I am super excited about this new group of products, because my Swedish grandmother was an embroidery artist, and I treasure the pieces I inherited from her! I am working on a new quilt for an Endangered Species Coalition exhibit, and I am dreaming up ways to include these gorgeous threads as I finish the piece. I’ve been chatting with Lepidopterists and Entomologists for this project. Can you guess what it is?

Have you made something wonderful with eQuilter fabrics?
Send us your photos to share with other eQuilter fans on our social media!

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:
June 6-11 – Quilt Canada – Halifax, Nova Scotia
July 4-12 – Helsinki & Savonlinna, Finland
August 18-24 – Bear Camp – Homer Alaska
Sept 28-30 – AQSG Seminar – Louisville, KY

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Free Quilt Pattern – Steampunk Jewels

Posted on June 2, 2023 by Luana

Our exclusive Steampunk collection just came back in stock last night, and we wanted to offer this pattern before it blows out again! Enter the esoteric world of Steampunk Jewels in this week’s Free Quilt Pattern, featuring our own digital-printed panel full of exquisitely detailed gears and jewel-like treasures representing a dragonfly, seahorse, hummingbird and butterfly.

To make this 59″ x 67″ quilt design, you will start with our exclusive 36″ x 44″ panel. Fussy-cut the Steampunk allover to make the corner blocks, then piece 2 gear prints and a Turquoise Hoffman Hand-Dye to create the borders. The Golden Yellow and Blue/Turquoise colors really pop on the Espresso/Taupe contrasting background.

Hardcore Steampunk fans will just adore this unique and highly-stylized quilt design!

…from the ‘Steampunk Jewels’ 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 ‘Bijoux Kitty‘ and ‘Golden Pals‘ 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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