People who get their cats and dogs from rescue centers and the Humane Society have some of the biggest hearts. To go into a rescue center and pick out an animal who has been abandoned or surrendered, is an experience that cracks your heart open to experience the kind of love that others can only imagine. Are you one of those people?
To make this 65″ x 65″ quilt design, you will start with the 24″ x 44″ panel which depicts animals journeying to their new home in a VW Bus. Add another panel of vignette blocks, piece with a solid green Kona, then finish with a coordinating stripe for the border.
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.
Friday something woke me up early at dawn. I opened my eyes and my room was filled with a pink light. Was I dreaming? No, it was the bright morning sun rising on a clear Colorado day, hitting the red maple tree behind our bedroom window, and reflecting a gold-suffused pink hue into the room. Friday was also “National Color Day” so it was an appropriate start to a day when we celebrate COLOR in our lives. I hope you are having a *Colorful* weekend!
Today would have been my first day at Quilt Market, but the trade show has been cancelled. Quilt Festival is still happening this coming week, but I will not be attending. I will be there in spirit, because we are a major sponsor.
The $5000 eQuilter Master Award for Contemporary Art has been given to Kestrel Michaud for her amazing art quilt “Leap of Faith”. We are also sponsoring 2 other Special Exhibits – “Access Delayed: African-American Suffragists’ Courageous Influence on the 19th Amendment”, and “Together in Unity”.
For those of you attending the event, I would appreciate if you would send photos of Kestrel with her quilt under our banner, and also photos of our sponsor logo sign with the other 2 special exhibits. I need to stay home to keep our 30 employees, and our family safe. Thank you for understanding.
This year has gone by fast in one way (because we are so busy) and very slow in other ways (no travel) but I just realized with a shock that Christmas is 2 months away! While the world is worrying about supply chain issues, we have kept our warehouse stocked and most of you have already purchased fabrics for holiday projects. If not, now would be the time to snag these seasonal designs!
…sharing your love of fabric, Luana and Paul
Quilt/Travel Calendar:
Nov 13 – Zoom lecture “Intl Quilt Trends” – Visions Art Museum – for Season Pass Holders. Nov 15 & 16 – Handweavers Guild Boulder – Zoom Lectures. Dec 4 – Zoom lecture “Intl Quilt Trends” – Quilt Canada Jan 12 – Apr 9, 2022 – New England Quilt Museum (NEQM) “For the Love of Gaia” exhibit Sat, April 9 – “International Quilt Trends” lecture – NEQM
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Posted inQuilts, Travel|Comments Off on Quilt Festival This Week
As Winter descends on the Northern Hemisphere, it brings the magic of the Aurora Borealis in the Arctic latitudes…shimmering rainbows of dancing colors that hang like curtains of silk blowing in the solar winds.
This week’s exclusive eQuilter Free Quilt Pattern features one of our most popular panels, capturing a moment of time with the Northern Lights rippling across the sky against a tree line silhouette.
To make this 61″ x 61″ quilt design, you will start with the 24″ x 44″ panel, then add Kona Solid Black and digital-printed starry coordinates to make this stunning nighttime scenic quilt.
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.
Thank you for the many emails about the stories I’ve shared during the pandemic. We do hope they are somewhat entertaining in these challenging times. You probably miss traveling, as I do, so I try to include stories and links to photos from travels… please join me on this little fantasy trip.
Retail stores are being encouraged to start their Christmas marketing earlier than ever this year due to supply chain logjams. However Halloween is more popular than ever, and I really don’t like to be rushed past the opportunity to enjoy the costumes of the season.
Long before Cosplay was a thing, I was sewing my own evening gowns for embassy parties in Hong Kong, sewing for Halloween and later for Renaissance Faires, and then going to ComicCon and Starfest to photograph the absolutely stunning intricate character garb that attendees wore on the Saturday night Costume Contest….long before Cosplay terminology came into common use. As Cosplay developed into a widely recognized and accepted trend, I was thrilled!
One of my favorite costume lectures was at Starfest at least 10 years ago, with a civilian Klingon in full TV-worthy costume and makeup, explaining how he created his detailed armor and accessories. Not just with a straight face, but totally in Klingon character. Do you know what is the most useful phrase on a Klingon warship? – “nuqDaq ‘oH puchpa”e’?”
If we go far enough back in my career, I can tell you about when I graduated from FIDM in Los Angeles. My senior project was worn to the Oscars that year, by a nominated director’s wife. I had an entry-level position lined up in Bob Mackie’s studio after graduation. Then there was a writer and director strike, and I did not have the luxury of waiting for the strike to end, so I worked at Joseph Magnin in Beverly Hills, as a personal shopper for costume people in the film industry.
After 6 months at JM, I landed a job designing silk dresses, which were manufactured in the same factory as Oscar de La Renta’s silk dress line. I became friends and then roommates with his head pattern maker in Hong Kong, but that is another story. (We are still friends!) However my love of beautiful fabrics, costumes, and lush textile design has a long history, and you see a part of that expressed in our carefully curated products for creative quilters and textile artists.
Thanks for sharing our service and my stories with your friends.
…sharing your love of fabric, Luana and Paul
* The photos above are from a display of the Emperor’s porcelain in a museum in Vienna, taken in 2015, in a collage with current eQuilter fabrics.
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 51″ x 62″ quilt design, you will start with a 36″ x 44″ panel, then piece four Rubin Studio blenders with 2 Hoffman Hand-Dyes to make the diamond on-point pieced border.
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 was one of those crystal blue Colorado Fall days that makes one glad to be alive. Autumn colors, happy people out on the street, clear sky and perfect slightly crisp temperatures. Everyone was out with their bikes and dogs and kids. I love this time of year, and I hope you are having a beautiful weekend also. I heard that John Denver song “Rocky Mountain High” wafting over Pearl Street today, and it brought a little tear to my eye.
We can only wonder how the history books will describe this period of time – of social upheaval and environmental angst. I am in the process of planning for the final exhibit of my curated exhibit “For the Love of Gaia” which has been affected by these events….inspired by conservation activists, but hindered by Covid challenges. The exhibit started at the Intl Quilt Museum in Lincoln Nebraska (with a virtual opening), then traveled to the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham England. Soon the quilts will travel to the New England Quilt Museum, where I will finally be able to see them all together in one space. (I am giving a presentation on the last day, at a closing reception.) Once again I must thank the artists in this project for their patience as our project unfolded during challenging circumstances.
These limitations and changes of plan are bittersweet but miniscule compared to the challenges that others have faced over the last 18 months. We are so grateful to be part of the quilting community which has remained strong and active throughout the last year.
Due to the Texas health policies, I have decided not to attend the Quilt Festival in Houston this year, however I know many of you are still going. I will be there in spirit, because we are a major sponsor. We continue to support Quilts Inc, the organizers of this event…and we congratulate ALL of the quilt artists whose work will hang in the show this month.
The $5000 eQuilter Master Award for Contemporary Art has been given to Kestrel Michaud her amazing art quilt “Leap of Faith“.
For those of you attending the event, I would appreciate if you would send photos of Kestrel with her quilt under our banner, and also photos of our sponsor logo sign with the other 2 special exhibits. I need to stay home to keep our 30 employees, and our family safe. Thank you for understanding.
…sharing your love of fabric, Luana and Paul
Quilt/Travel Calendar:
Nov 13 – Zoom lecture “Intl Quilt Trends” – Visions Art Museum – Zoom Lecture. Nov 15 & 16 – Handweavers Guild Boulder – Zoom Lectures. Dec 4 – Zoom lecture “Intl Quilt Trends” – Quilt Canada Jan 12 – Apr 9, 2022 – New England Quilt Museum (NEQM) “For the Love of Gaia” exhibit Sat, April 9 – “International Quilt Trends” lecture – NEQM
To make this 53″ x 64″ quilt design, you will start with the opulent floral panel, cut from running yardage with a solid border on each selvedge. Then piece a coordinate floral with a white-on-white butterfly for the triangle border. Finish with Amethyst and Deep Violet marbled blenders.
Be sure to pick up some beautiful Purple thread to finish this lovely quilt project.
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.
Over the last several years we’ve shared stories about our daughter Sophie, from her adoption in China, to her appearances on Quilting Arts TV, and now her college career. But it has been awhile since I mentioned our 2 boys who are all grown up. Sam is 24 and Mason is 32. How did that happen??
This weekend I was remembering some of the things that happened when our boys were little, and doing the things that little boys do. We have family legends about muddy footprints through the house, a toad in a jar on the kitchen table, catching (and releasing) lizards in Hawaii, finding garter snakes in the garden, picking big green tomato worms off my tomato plants, catching crickets to hear them sing, and the glorious but infrequent visits to a friend who had an aquarium full of snakes in her living room. When we visited family friends in Florida, they loved hearing stories of the alligators on the golf course. When we visited the zoo, we spent a lot of time in the reptile house. Oh yeah, that’s what memories are made of…
My brothers did things like this too. We grew up across from a muddy pond, a swampy stinky pit that was later rehabilitated into a park with shaded green lawns, a lake and a graceful bridge. (Loomiller Park in Longmont) But when we lived there as kids, there were frogs and toads, minnows and tadpoles, catfish and muskrats who lurked in the thick brown water. If we stepped into the pond the sticky mud would grab our shoes and that was the end of the story for our footwear. My brothers would bring buckets of pond water and creatures home, and after dinner when they went out to return the slippery creatures to the pond, the whole garage smelled like a murky slimy green marsh. Oh yeah, those were the days. Good cheap fun.
I have to say that Sophie has really never gotten excited about bugs and snakes and frogs. She was focused on soccer and violin and books. But as we all know, you don’t have to be a boy, to grow up to be a herpetologist or entomologist.
Our boys of course grew out of their fascination with creepy-crawlies, but I am sure there is a whole new generation of kids who would rather spend time with a frog, than do homework. I see you guys buying fabric for them! So tonight I created a new category just for those future herpetologists…and the parents and grandparents who are wracking their brains about a Christmas quilt gift.
…sharing your love of fabric, Luana and Paul
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Posted inAnimals|Comments Off on They Grow Up So Fast
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.
We have found over the years, the fabrics that make people happy are the fabrics we need to stock in depth. Topics like Food and Drink, Travel and Wildlife, Flowers and Pets….make for good quilt subjects.
In a more general sense, Eye Candy and Color Inspiration are other ways that we seek to support your creativity. Every week we have a few special products or collections that just ‘Wow’ us, and we smile, knowing that it will also make so many of you happy as well. Especially over the last 18 months, we’ve needed these things to delight and motivate us to stay focused on what brings us joy – playing with fabric, cutting and sewing and quilting.
Last year there was a new product category that clearly made many of you happy – our Artisan Chocolate department. This is a seasonal category. We can only ship chocolate during the cooler months of Fall through Early Spring. Our first shipment of the season arrived this week, and our employees snapped up several of them within a few hours, doing quality control I guess. Haha. We all need an emergency chocolate bar stashed in our purse, right?
Many years ago I was in a shuttle bus, on my way from the Reno Airport to Art Quilt Tahoe, when a snowstorm hit. As we got to the top of the pass, our vehicle slid off the road into a snow bank, and we were stuck. As we waited for rescue, we decided to pool our food resources. The only thing we had between us was my emergency chocolate bar in my purse, so we split it among the 6 of us. That is how I met Terrie Mangat!
I am starting to post photos of Colorado Fall Colors, and my Brown Bear photos from Alaska this weekend. If you would like to review beautiful quilt images from past quilt festivals, you can review the other albums on my photo page. Enjoy!
…sharing your love of fabric, Luana and Paul
Quilt/Travel Calendar:
Nov 13 – Zoom lecture “Intl Quilt Trends” – Visions Art Museum – Zoom Lecture. Nov 15 & 16 – Handweavers Guild Boulder – Zoom Lectures. Dec 4 – Zoom lecture “Intl Quilt Trends” – Quilt Canada Jan 12 – Apr 9, 2022 – New England Quilt Museum (NEQM) “For the Love of Gaia” exhibit Sat, April 9 – “International Quilt Trends” lecture – NEQM
