eQuilter Blog

Here is another great art quilt from the Taiwan Quilt Festival. This dynamic piece won Best of Show!

Artist: Cai Meiying
“Boy Facing the Wind – My Boy of Yingfeng”
100 cm x 100 cm (40″ x 40″)

Artist Statement: (Google Translation)
The air was filled with the smells of rain, sweat, and tears. The pursuit of a goal is like chasing a football on the field. Along the way, you encounter various obstacles and setbacks…but you are willing to get up again after failure. That requires strong will and confidence. I saw that strength on your face. Because we believe, we persevere. Because we dream, life is wonderful. Watching you intently on the field, radiating confidence, I also rediscovered my own courage.

My comments:
The artist has managed to capture the sense of movement, with the figures in focus and the background abstracted with an out-of-focus texture. Amazing how she has captured the intensity of the boys’ faces with relatively simple shapes.

Sharing your passion for fabric…
Luana & Paul

Subscribe to my artist website and blog!
www.luanarubin.com

Travel/Lecture Dates:
Dec 10 – Canadian Quilt Association – Zoom Lecture – Intl Quilt Trends
Feb 2 – SAQA Europe/Middle East – Zoom Lecture
Feb 18-21 – QuiltCon – Raleigh NC
Apr 26 – May 1 – Alegre Retreat, Gateway CO
May 16 – New England Quilt Museum, Soul Stories Artist Reception

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.

I hope all of you have plans to join your quilt guild or your local quilting klatch for holiday merriment, stitching and b**ching, or whatever makes you laugh. It has been a heckuva year and we all need to have some clinking glasses and quilty gift exchanges to get through the end of the December. Our local Meals on Wheels sells frozen take-and-bake pies as a fundraiser, so I went and got a couple pies for our family Christmas celebrations. All my quilt projects are finished for the year, so it is time to hit the quilt parties. Yay!

This week the organizers of the Houston Quilt Festival had a big announcement: The dates for next year’s festival have been moved forward and will now be November 12-15. But also they announced that Quilt Market (the trade show for quilt shops) has been permanently cancelled. I have been going to Quilt Market since March 1999 so I’ve had waves of nostalgia the last few days, thinking of all the wonderful talented people in the industry who I have come to know and love. It is the end of an era.

However this week also brought us an abundance of magazine publications, and I am most excited by Quilting Arts Magazine because my artist group “Soul Stories” (premiered in Houston) is featured with a fabulous 12-page gallery, starting on page 32. Congratulations to our group of artists, on such a strong start to our project the last couple months. If you pick up the magazine, be sure to check out this article.

A couple days ago we had our first big snow of the season (7″ total) and our first super-chill nights. (Down to 9 degrees Fahrenheit) The luminous full moon shining on the snowy trees and hills, reminds me of that Christmas Eve poem:

“The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow
gave the luster of midday to objects below…”

It was a harbinger of the Pantone Color of the Year for 2026, which is “Cloud Dancer”…an ivory color representing clarity and serenity…a calming influence in a frenetic society. Think of it as a blank canvas. I like the whisper soft palette of pastels that coordinate with this floating, illuminating hue. You don’t have to like it or not like it. It is a color trend forecast for 2026 and it is also the color worn by Suffragettes. You may recall that I spent an evening with Lee Eiseman in September, and had a 6-hour conversation over dinner. As the executive director of the Pantone Color Institute, she is the color maven who makes the final choice and announcement of the COTY.

We’ve hung a fresh pine wreath in the office and at home, greeting us with that woodsy green fragrance, and now I am in the holiday spirit. Today I am taking my “Celtic Christmas” quilt (made for the now-defunct “Irish Quilt Magazine”) to a Denver Christmas quilt guild party, where we are going to hang up all our quilts and celebrate our quilty friendships and count our blessings.

We all wish you many seasonal joys as you prepare for whatever holiday you celebrate.

Sharing your love for fabric,
Luana and Paul

Subscribe to my artist blog here. Most recent article – Pro Tips for BERNINA Q 20

Travel/Lecture Dates:
Dec 10 – Canadian Quilt Association – Zoom Lecture – Intl Quilt Trends
Feb 2 – SAQA Europe/Middle East – Zoom Lecture
Feb 18-21 – QuiltCon – Raleigh NC
Apr 26 – May 1 – Alegre Retreat, Gateway CO
May 16 – New England Quilt Museum, Soul Stories Artist Reception


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

See Luana’s Artist Blog, 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.

Now is a good time to review your stash and see what hues and values may be missing, before the holidays fly by and the Winter Sewing Season begins!

Someone recently asked me about how to proceed in developing a color palette of fabrics, and I thought it might be useful to offer some ideas.

You probably have plenty of fabrics in your favorite color. If you re-organize your stash once a year, this will become obvious. My favorite color is a rich Amethyst Purple. (A jeweltone) Over the years I have expanded my purple stash to include:

Dark Purple – like Deep Eggplant
Pastel and Midtone Purple – Lilac and Lavender
Desaturated Purple – like Mauve
Cool Purple – like Iris
Warm Purple – like Plum

However we need more than one color so the next step might be to review the analogous colors – the adjacent colors on the color wheel:

Blue and Turquoise
Magenta and Orchid

Then add a pop of a complementary color.
Yellow is opposite Purple on the color wheel, so this is the perfect accent color. Every successful quilt needs a ‘pop’ accent color!

Explore different values and different saturation levels of the complementary color. Lay out your palette of favorite colors, and then audition your potential complementary colors to see which color combinations ‘sing’ to you.

I like to push my accent color just a little bit one way or the other, so I might choose a Marigold or a Citrus/Lime-Yellow.

Eventually you can work your way around the color wheel and develop a collection of darks and lights, warm and cool versions, hot brights and soft de-saturated choices.

Developing a Neutral Palette of Black and White, Gray and Brown, etc. helps you to see the rest of your rainbow color palette as you audition possible color combinations.

Developing a color palette in your stash takes time, and you will find your taste changes over time. You will notice that you have preferences for solids, blender prints, analogous prints, multicolor prints, batiks or hand-dyes. You will become more adventurous in choosing your accent colors. You will discover combinations that had never occurred to you before. That is the fun, and the joy of developing your stash…and how glorious is it one day to think of a new color adventure and everything you dream of is right there at your fingertips!

Well anyway, that’s what I’ve been doing for 30+ years. Have fun preparing for the post-holiday quilting season!


Sharing your love for fabric,
Luana and Paul

Subscribe to my artist blog here. Most recent article – Pro Tips for BERNINA Q 20

Travel/Lecture Dates:
Dec 10 – Canadian Quilt Association – Zoom Lecture – Intl Quilt Trends
Feb 2 – SAQA Europe/Middle East – Zoom Lecture
Feb 18-21 – QuiltCon – Raleigh NC
Apr 26 – May 1 – Alegre Retreat, Gateway CO
May 16 – New England Quilt Museum, Soul Stories Artist Reception


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

See Luana’s Artist Blog, 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.

It is Thanksgiving Eve, and I am home from my wonderful trip to Taipei. Many thanks to those who gave me such a warm welcome, and who took care of me during my visit. To all my quilter friends in Taiwan, Japan and Korea….you always inspire me with your grace, beauty and creativity.

As a featured artist and speaker, I was given a gallery space right at the entrance to the Taiwan Quilt Festival. I brought 7 quilts to share, and this one (above) was finished the day before I flew to Taipei. I made this piece special for the Taiwan event. (42″ wide x 52″ high) The background is Evolon, painted with Golden Fluid Acrylics. The dragon and goddess figure were built up with batiks and hand-dyes, using fusibles and raw-edge applique. Then it was quilted on my BERNINA Q 20, which is a sitdown midarm machine. I gave a demo for the Q 20 at the show, and it was a pleasure to share my tips and tricks for the machine.

This textile artwork is a depiction of the Buddhist goddess of Peace and Compassion, and she rides a dragon in a rainbow sky. Her name is Kwan Yin (Quan Yin) and she came to Taiwan as my prayer for peace. The red characters on the left also say “Peace” which is my wish for this free democracy. Having visited China many times, I understand why the people of Taiwan guard their independence so fiercely.

As I mentioned last week, there was an abundance of Taiwanese quilts in Houston this year. Something is cooking in this island nation, and I am sure we will be hearing more from this group of enthusiastic quilters. I am reviewing my thoughts and editing photos over this long holiday weekend, and will be sharing more with you next week.

Also….thank you for all the birthday wishes on my personal Facebook page! You made my day!

Sharing our passion for fabric…
Luana & Paul

Subscribe to my artist website and blog!
www.luanarubin.com

Travel/Lecture Dates:
Dec 10 – Canadian Quilt Association – Zoom Lecture – Intl Quilt Trends
Feb 2 – SAQA Europe/Middle East – Zoom Lecture
Feb 18-21 – QuiltCon – Raleigh NC
Apr 26 – May 1 – Alegre Retreat, Gateway CO
May 16 – New England Quilt Museum, Soul Stories Artist Reception

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.