Luana Rubin

Creative Nudge - Canada, Trends, Tornadoes & Graduation

There are so many things to write about - I don't know where to begin!

First let me tell you that this is a scene from Quilt BC in Penticton Canada from last week. An hour before the exhibit opened, several classes of schoolchildren were brought to have a preview of the quilt show. The kids were so interested in the quilts, and the white-gloved docent had a story to go with each quilt, to keep the kids interested. At the end of the exhibit tour, their teachers gave them paper and markers, and invited them to design their own quilt blocks. Brilliant!

Next I went to Quilt Market in Portland, and the trade show was full of young people with new ideas. Several fabric manufacturers previewed digitally printed fabric collections, and we'll see those starting to show up at eQuilter in the near future. The price is a little higher, but the artwork quality looks like a screen print with 30 or 40 screens! (Normally they are around 15 screens) We are excited to see this huge and very important trend take hold in the next year.

I can say that the flat color trend with simple artwork that is filled in with a Photoshop paintbrush, is being replaced by lush intricate artwork with a handpainted look. It is more sophisticated and it looks fresh after all the simple flat artwork we've seen on fabric the last several years.

Our hearts go out to the residents of Moore Oklahoma, and Tuesday I was on the phone with Mission of Love director Kathy Price. We agreed to start a new quilt relief effort for the tornado victims, and you can read the press release from Mission of Love on this information page.

Quilts can be dropped off IN PERSON at eQuilter, or shipped directly to Mission of Love in Ohio.

DO NOT SHIP QUILTS TO EQUILTER, as this will delay and perhaps prevent distribution to Oklahoma tornado survivors.

The deadline for receiving quilts is June 20.

Kathy and I will go to Moore June 27-28 to distribute disaster relief supplies and comfort quilts.

If you have questions, please call or email Dana at eQuilter Customer Service:
service@eQuilter.com

(Please do NOT try to call Kathy at MOL because she is simultaneously coordinating several different urgent relief projects right now - with no paid receptionist to answer calls or emails)

If you don't have time to make a quilt, please consider donating directly to Mission of Love via PayPal, so they can purchase relief supplies in bulk and load up a truck bound for Oklahoma. Mission of Love has no overhead, so everything you give will go straight to purchasing supplies in bulk at the best price. Kathy and her team of volunteers are masters at this, so we will also send them money to help fund the purchase of relief supplies. You may recall that I went to Guatemala in December, on a Mission of Love Cleft Lip/Palate Surgery trip.

Lastly, our daughter Sophie graduated from elementary school Tuesday night, and we are so proud of her. I have posted some photos of her from graduation night. I will also post photos from Quilt BC (Canada) on my photo page.

Thursday night I fly to Columbus Ohio for a very quick 2 day visit to Quilt National in Athens.

 

* The quilt shown above is "French Garden" by Brigitte Villeneuve of Jonquiere QC, at Quilt BC 2013 in Canada last week.

The News from Lake Okanagan

Paul and I just celebrated our 18th wedding anniversary yesterday, before I hopped on a plane to Penticton, BC in Canada. You never heard of Penticton? Neither did the United rep at the Vancouver airport. That made me just a little bit nervous, as I anticipated flying on a tiny prop plane over the sharp snowy peaks.

It turned out to be a gorgeous one hour flight, over lush green pine forests, huge blue lakes in deep gorges, and wide rivers running through fields dotted with livestock. As we flew over yet another lake to land in Penticton, I checked out my "beach" hotel from my little round window, and plotted my sunset walk along the water's edge.

Anyway, we are SO excited that the arrival of our Star Trek fabric is actually corresponding with the premier of the new Star Trek movie! I mean, this NEVER happens! Usually the fabric arrives 6 months before, or 6 months after the movie comes out. So for us Trekkie fans it is rather thrilling that we can buy the fabric, whip up a quick lap quilt, and wrap ourselves in it by the 3rd time we see it in the theater.

Sadly, I will not be able to participate in opening night fervor at the new movie. Usually I am there at the midnight show with all the other diehard nutcases, and then I go see it again a day or two later, and then again a week later, etc. I've been begging our suppliers to get the license for Star Trek for YEARS, and I assume there are a good number of Sci-Fi / Trekkie groupies out there in our customer base, to keep us busy cutting yards of Kirk and Spock (Original Series, of course!) for months.

Our 2nd year of business was partially funded by Harry Potter fabric. The trucks would roll up to our back door, and disgorge dozens of cartons of HP fabric. (when we were still in the 4300 sq ft warehouse that was previously occupied by Celestial Seasonings....and everything smelled like mint tea) As fast as it came in, we shipped it out. It was like a miracle. No, it was like MAGIC! Yeah, that's it! I believe in magic!

The view as we flew into Vancouver today was spectacular, especially when we turned and I could see the Northern Passage between the islands and the coast, where the cruise ships sail up to Alaska. Maybe some day I'll make that trip, to see the whales and other wildlife in this wild coastal region. For those of you who live here, I can see why you would never want to leave.

For those of you in this area of BC who are coming to the show, I will be at the award ceremony on Wednesday night, and I hope to meet some of you there! Please do come and say hello if you see me there. I will be walking the show Thursday morning, and then I have to figure out how to get to Kelowna for my flight to Portland. Quilt Market starts Friday morning in Portland
Oregon.

Live Long and Prosper.

Creative Nudge - Just Add Sprinkles

Happy May Day!
It is snowing again in Colorado.

As I mentioned in my Saturday newsletter, I had to leave Santa Fe on Friday, to go home for an emergency root canal...so I can't report to you on the SAQA conference there. Darn!

However I had 24 hours to kill, and I kept busy taking photos to keep my mind busy. This is one of my favorite images. It is the entrance to a little gift shop in a hidden courtyard near The Shed restaurant.

If you look close you will see not only the typical Southwest items such as sombreros and serapes, but also red poinsettia flowers, and frosted donuts with sprinkles. By this time I was on major pain meds so I am very sorry my photo of the shop name did not turn out, but perhaps one our our New Mexico natives will let me know the name of the shop.

Anyway, I just thought creativity like this just has to be shared. Personally I can't eat donuts with sprinkles, but they still make me smile. Especially when they are used in an artistic garland over a painted blue door.

*************

Today was my 2nd quilt class in Sophie's 5th grade class. Today we pinned the templates to the various fabrics, and cut out the pieces. Thursday everybody is going to get a needle and thread, and we are going to sew the pieces into blocks.

One of my favorite moments today was when the kids were measuring and marking the extra 1/4" seam allowance around the templates. One girl had a really slippery ruler and was having trouble. However she is a sharp kid, and she picked up on one of my favorite terms from last week's lesson.

"Should I just eyeball it?" she asked, in a conspiratorial whisper.

I looked around, hunched over and said - "Go for it!"

"YES!" she exhaled, and in 5 minutes went from slowest in the class, to completion.

Sometimes you just have to eyeball it in the home stretch.

And then add sprinkles.

* Tickets for Longmont Hover Home Fundraiser * -
Secrets & Storytelling by Luana to support a Victorian estate
...THIS WEEKEND ON MAY 6th!

* SAQA & Andover Fabrics Call for Entries *

Best Laid Plans

I'm sorry I can't report to you on the SAQA annual conference in Santa Fe, because I had to fly home yesterday so I could have an emergency root canal today! However I did manage to spend 24 hours in Santa Fe, and as I walked around town taking photos, I realized that I need to go back there soon.

The night I arrived in Santa Fe, I had a big clue that things wouldn't go as planned. Hertz lost my reservation, and didn't have a single car for me. Even though I had my reservation in hand, they just kind of shrugged and blew me off. The Avis rep happily told me he had just one car left that he could rent to me...at double the Hertz price. Instead I called a taxi, and enjoyed the sunset while waiting in front of the rustic adobe airport terminal.

That night I wandered into town, found a restaurant with some vegetarian options and lots of local color, and found a seat at the community table. As I sat there chatting with others at the big table, I realized I had eaten there the other time I visited Santa Fe...25 years ago!

When I came out of the restaurant, a colorful shop window caught my eye. I crossed the street with camera in hand, and took a photo of...one of my Guadalupe fabric designs! So there is an example of a design process going full circle: from my design inspiration in Santa Fe 25 years ago in the cathedral there, to my return, and my fabric design being used by another artisan to create a final product. I just love when that happens!

My next trip is in a couple weeks - I'll be in Penticton, Canada for the Quilt BC award ceremony on May 15, then headed straight for Quilt Market in Portland Oregon that weekend.

A week later (!) I will be at Quilt National in Athens Ohio on May 24-25.

Quilt Alliance has just announced their event Not Fade Away to be held July 20 in conjunction with Sacred Threads. I was very honored that they asked me to interview Jinny Beyer for the Q.S.O.S. project, during the demonstration portion of the event. I'll also be on a panel with Pat Sloan addressing the topic of "Social Media for Quilters".

So I hope to meet many of you at these events. If you are there and you see me, please don't be shy! Come up and say hello - I'd love to meet you!

* Tickets for Hover Home Fundraiser * -
Sunday May 5, 2 pm in Longmont, Colorado
Storytelling by Luana to support a Victorian estate.

Creative Nudge - Joy of Making

Over the last few days I've been out doing creative fieldwork...observing the joy that comes from making one's own design.

Over the weekend Denver had our own StarFest, which is the galactic Sci-Fi version of ComicCon. For 3 days the convention was overrun with geeks...er... people in Star Trek and Star Wars costumes, DIY Klingon and Dr Who Costumes, and other character costumes ranging from Captain Jack Sparrow...to Wonder Woman. The vast majority of the costumes worn were obviously made by the wearer, who clearly spent hundreds of hours bringing their ideas to manifestation.

It was good to go and see all that raw, crazy, over-the-top creativity and ingenuity. Sometimes we crafters think we have the corner on the DIY market, but there were some serious costume designers who have regular dayjobs but spend their nights and weekends dreaming up highly detailed costumes and accessories. Whoa, some of those big guys who not only dress as Klingons, but also speak the Klingon language, wax poetic when they talk about how they sourced their Klingon "uniform" details.

On the other end of that scale, today I taught my first 5th grade quilting class. We spent our first session designing quilt blocks, cutting out templates, choosing fabrics, and pinning paper templates to the fabric. The kids were TOTALLY into it - both boys and girls. We are creating a Civil War inspired quilt, and our goal is to present it to a veteran before the end of the school year.

What really struck me is how the pure joy of making something, was just as strong with both the Klingons and the 5th graders.

If you follow me on Facebook, you already saw that I was posting from Klingon and Steampunk costume seminars. Mason's comment about StarFest was "I've never seen so many corsets in one place in my life!" Yes how true. Our mothers burned their bras and girdles in the 60's and 70's, so our daughters could wear laced corsets in the new millennium.

Tomorrow I am flying down to Santa Fe to attend the SAQA annual conference. Hope to see some of you there!

The image above is the winner of the SciFi category of the costume contest. Check out my other photos from Starfest!



* Tickets for Hover Home Fundraiser * -
Storytelling by Luana to support a Victorian estate.

* SAQA & Andover Fabrics Call for Entries *

Creative Nudge - Go To Your Happy Place

Mother Nature apparently didn't get Punxsutawney Phil's message that Spring has arrived. The day before my trip we had 9" of snow in Boulder, and the two days I spent in Ohio with Sophie (filming 4 segments for Quilting Arts TV with Pokey Bolton) were also filled with lots of snowflakes.

Sunday night I had dinner with Kathy and Bob Price, and I got an update on what our eQuilter donations are doing to fund further relief efforts in the US and Guatemala. Mission of Love continues to ship medical supplies for the Guatemala City hospital, and building supplies for the children's hospice in TecPan.

Today my friend Mark Lipinski finally got his kidney transplant, donated by his friend and neighbor Mary Eichler. They both seem to have come through the surgery with flying colors, and are resting and recovering at the hospital tonight. What a miracle...and what a relief!

I have a stepbrother whose life was saved with a kidney transplant (good thing since he is the father of twin boys!) and another friend who is a long-time heart transplant recipient. Another friend's wife received a liver transplant and miraculously has her life back. So tonight I am just remembering and thanking those who have donated (including Mary!) so that others might live.

We had some sad news in the quilting world today: Pat Campbell (known for her Jacobean Applique) has left this world for the big quilting hoop, after being cared for by her husband John for many years. Pat was a well-loved quilt artist, teacher, fabric designer, and author; and she will be missed.

Sophie and I decided to stay on the East Coast the rest of this Spring Break week, after leaving our Quilting Arts and Mission of Love friends in Ohio. I lived in NYC for 6 years, and it has a special place in my heart. It is much more pleasant to be here now, compared to the 80's when I lived in the East Village.

There are still many business closed and many residents displaced because of Hurricane Sandy - even more so outside of the city. If you have a quilt you'd like to donate to someone in need, we'll make sure it is put into the hands of a hurricane victim very quickly. The quilt donations have slowed down but we are receiving more and more urgent requests from groups for comfort quilts. Many sincere thanks to all of you who have already sent in beautiful quilts for this hurricane relief effort, and many thanks to Timeless Treasures for their distribution work.

As Sophie and I walked the Avenues of New York today, the skyscrapers lit up from the Golden Hour at the end of the day. I saw many people on the street stop to admire the light on the skyline, and many who took a photo of the dramatic colors reflecting off glass and stone. It could have been a sunset on Maui, the way the people on the street responded. It was a reminder that we all find Beauty, no matter where we are, because Beauty feeds the Soul, and is stored in an inner archive of creative inspiration.

To recharge my creativity batteries, I "go to my happy place", one of which happens to be Manhattan!

** This photo was taken in front of Grand Central Station, with the Chrysler Building in the background.

* SAQA & Andover Fabrics Call for Entries *

* Hurricane Sandy Quilt Relief Info *

A Full Plate of Blossoms!

 

Do you ever have weeks where everything just seems to hit all at once? That's the kind of week I had...starting with euthanising our beloved doggie Sunday, flying to a trade show Monday, helping Sam to catch up after being home sick for 3 weeks, getting ready for Quilting Arts TV, and now 9" of snow! There were 600 flights cancelled in Denver today, but I'll be driving to the airport at 6 am Sunday morning.

In the meantime we are trying to get used to a household without a doggie.

Sophie and I are on the road all next week - starting with filming at Quilting Arts TV studios in the Cleveland area. (You can see clips of our previous appearances on the show, on our eQuilter video page.) We'll have dinner with Kathy Price from Mission of Love, and hear about the ongoing relief work in Guatemala, and elsewhere.

If any of you Canadian quilters are planning to come to the Penticton show in May, I will be at the award ceremony the evening of Weds May 15. I signed up for a tour that day, and if any of you would like to join me, you can sign up online. I'd love to hang out with some local quilters on the vineyard tour May 15! Also, I have to figure out how to get from Penticton, to a 3 pm flight in Kelowna on the 16th. Suggestions are welcome!

A week from now Sophie and I will be at the Kite Festival on the Mall in Washington DC, and hopefully the cherry blossoms will be in abundant bloom. I've got my camera charged up, loaded with an empty memory card, and I am anxious to take some Springtime photos! By this time next week I hope to be in a shower of cherry blossom petals, instead of a shower of white snowflakes.

The Tokyo Quilt Festival always has plenty of Sakura (cherry blossom) themed quilts, so I was inspired to search for more photos to remind me of these lovely quilts. I am also just crazy about cherry blossom fabrics, so when you see those designs on the eQuilter site, you'll know I had a special hand in picking out those lovely Asian fabrics. Yummy!

Are you taking a Spring Break this week?
Will you be taking photos of spring flowers, to inspire a future quilt project?

Creative Nudge - Springboard for Creativity

Tonight I am writing to you from my hotel in Las Vegas! I am here for 2 days at a textile show, and I just finished up ordering lots of bodacious fabrics that are shipping this summer.

After immersing myself in the spare design aesthetics of the Modern Quilt movement at QuiltCon a couple weeks ago, I found myself still very eager to dive into several very opulent gilded fabric collections that are inspired by textile designs of the 18th and 19th centuries.

The more I look at fabric, the more I learn about color theory and design. You can look at surface design every day of your life and still learn more by going to museums, looking at design and history books, and just walking though a fabric or department store to take in all the varieties of design interpretations. I just never get tired of looking at color and design!

What is most exciting to me is how we can still come up with new and interesting textile designs, simply by re-combining old motifs in new colors, re-scaling (making larger or smaller), and especially by juxtaposing with other textiles.

I am eager to share with you the many new versions of yarn-dyes, including multi-color chambrays. (also known as shot cottons) There is also a whole new crop of classic plaids that have been re- imagined, re-colored, re-scaled and then combined in quilts in imaginative ways. I am also loving fine quality prints that mimic ikat plaids with bi-color twist yarns. You have to be a pretty serious fabric head to realise the enormity of these re-imagined classics.... they are like a visual punch line...and they make me giggle.

As new technical innovations begin to trickle into the overseas factories, and designers learn how to exploit these new design opportunities, we will see more fabrics that catch our eye and look "different" ... but we can't quite explain why.

******************************

We had a very sad weekend. Our beloved sheltie had a health emergency over the weekend, and I had to make the painful decision to euthanise on Sunday morning before I left on this trip Monday morning. We are in the habit of letting her out first thing in the morning, and it will take awhile to let go of all our doggie habits. Cherry was born on Valentines, and left us on St Patrick's Day.

Tuesday morning at 7:02 am EDT (4:02 PDT) is the exact moment of the Vernal Equinox - when the sun passes over the Equator and Spring begins in the Northern Hemisphere. (...and Fall begins in the Southern Hemisphere) I am more likely to make and keep Spring Equinox resolutions, than New Year resolutions, so I am using the impetus of Spring for a Creative "To Do" list that will keep me focused for the rest of the year.

How does Springtime inspire your creative process?

** This image above is a detail of the quilt "Life" by Yoshiko Katagiri from the Tokyo Quilt Festival in January 2013.

Creative Nudge - QuiltCon Report

* This is a detail shot of Pamela Johnson's quilt "Paper Shredder" from QuiltCon in Austin, presented by the Modern Quilt Guild.

My trip to QuiltCon in Austin Texas was rather surreal - traveling through snow to leave town - and flying back home in another snowstorm. I flew on a small plane both ways, and an old friend of the family (our family doctor) was on both flights, going to and from a medical conference in Austin! Small world. We shared travel photos on our laptops on the way back, serendipitously having adjacent seats on the small plane.

The long weekend in Austin was a neat little package tied up with a plaid bow. Many of my friends from the industry were there too... all of us were there to check it out and see what's up with this new Modern Quilting movement. I managed to have some business meetings that would have otherwise waited for Quilt Market in May, so it was great to get a jump on the Spring business season. The weather was mostly mild, so I went from winter storm, to mild sunshine, and back to a blizzard. (Lucky to land Sunday during a brief window of snow cessation!)

We were all surprised at how many mature ladies were at the show! We quickly surmised that there is such a huge population of quilters in Texas, that many local quilters were able to pop over to Austin to check out this Modern Quilt phenom. My industry friends and I had the most fun standing in the rows of the quilt exhibits, listening to the frank comments from visitors. They ranged from "I don't get it." to "Wow, this is so fresh and inspiring!" It was especially fun to hear all ages of quilters saying "I can't wait to get home and start sewing!"

I came to the show as a sponsor and a presenter, so I could learn what Modern Quilting is really all about. I left feeling that this movement is growing and changing as rapidly as it was formed - and in another couple years we might not recognize its exponentially changing mutation.

There are some who have tried to define the movement with guidelines that some might find narrow or rigid. At the same time they are very welcoming to newcomers and beginners, and they encourage newbies to just get started and don't be intimidated.

There are those who are super-creative, who have been chafing at the bit and pushing the boundaries of the "Modern" definitions. One of them won Best of Show! Because of that top award-winning quilt, I am no longer concerned that those writing the Modern guidelines will limit the movement. It has taken on a life of its own, and the creative conversation is being crowd-sourced online as I type these words.

What I can tell you is that the Modern Quilting movement is a fresh clean design aesthetic, inspired by Modern architecture, Frank Lloyd Wright, Mad Men, Gee's Bend and Nancy Crow's quilts.

Instead of using layers and embellishment, it uses simple shapes and a lot of negative space. The negative space is often filled with dense or complex quilting, often stitched by brilliantly talented young longarm quilters.

It reminds me a lot of the spare design aesthetic I saw at the Tokyo Quilt Festival... except where the Japanese quilters are using Indigo and Taupe... the Modern quilters are using bright colors and white. It was fun to see yarn-dyed plaids being used at this show too... one of my favorite fabrics used at the Tokyo show.

My Russian translator friend Marina was there from St. Petersburg, and she had a modern red quilt hanging in the show. She plans to start a Modern Quilt Guild in Russia when she returns. (You may recall I was at the Moscow Quilt Festival in September.)

I can't wait to see what happens next!

I also want to mention that there was a glitch in the payment system for the Tentmakers of Cairo documentary fundraiser, so if you tried to make a donation and it didn't go through, please try again!


* Hurricane Sandy Quilt Relief Info *
(YES! - We are still accepting donated quilts!)

* Sandyhook Elementary Memorial Quilt Project *

********************
Would you like to share your enthusiasm for eQuilter ?
Send us your own Testimonial!

See my photo page for travel images, comment on my blog, follow me on Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram or Twitter for more color and design ideas. Quilt show reviews on the eQuilter Video page.

Click Here to See ALL our Newest Products This Week!

Howdy from Central Texas

As I am writing this, it is Friday night and I have really only been at QuiltCon for one day. This is the very first conference for the Modern Quilt Guild, being held in Austin Texas. It is a small show, but there are a lot of curious people here checking it out!

I am surprised at how many mature ladies are here. We were expecting it to be all younger ladies - and although I heard there were a lot of diapers being changed in the Ladies Room - there were plenty of middle-aged and retirement-aged quilters here today. Interesting!

Not everyone "gets" the Modern Quilt Guild movement, but that's ok. I think it is a very fresh and welcoming movement, and it attracts those who are looking for something different. Those of us at the show have heard a wide range of comments from those who are walking through the quilt exhibit. Everything from "I don't get it" to "Wow! That is so cool!". That is good, because it means it is bringing in a whole new group of people who are looking for something unique.

The first person I saw when I walked into the Conference Center Friday was my translator from Russia! Gosh you just never know who you are going to see at a quilt show these days!

This Sunday at 11 am I am giving a trend presentation, on how trends tend to move in spirals, i.e. move in a great circle and repeat themselves a generation later, but in a new incarnation. I will be giving away many door prizes so bring your business cards to drop in the hat!

Be sure to check out my photos from QuiltCon on my Flickr page.

If the weather cooperates in Denver (if the next snowstorm is not too bad) I'll be home to watch the Oscars Sunday night!

My spring travel schedule includes:

March - taping 4 segments with Sophie at Quilting Arts TV

April - SAQA Conference in Santa Fe

May - Quilt Canada in Penticton BC, and Quilt Market in Portland Oregon.