Monthly Archives: May 2009

The belle of the ball

May 7th, 2009 in News & Events
By Lisa Fulmer

Mirror, mirror on the wall—who’s the fairest of them all?

Lutradur® has become our little Cinderella, and she has many suitors! Everyone at NAMTA is very excited about this new art surface. It was even selected, along with our Color Tool, as a “new favorite thing” by a prince of a NAMTA judge, who presented it at his board meeting tonight. At our demo table, we painted Lutradur with acrylics, watercolors, inks, colored pencils and markers.

Lutradur demo

Not to be thought of as wicked stepsisters—Timtex®, fast2fuse®, and the Ready-to-Go!® Blank Canvas Books and Blank Board Books were dancing up quite the storm, too. The art store retailers really loved all the models that the talented members of our Creative Troupe designed. Never fear, I’ll have more close-ups of all the fabulous models for you in a couple weeks, after we get them into the studio for a photo shoot!
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We had a great time showing off our books on fabric art, papercrafts, art quilting and mixed media techniques—we got people thinking about new classes to offer. Continue Reading…

Fabulous Files, Fabulous Gifts

May 7th, 2009 in Free Projects, Papercrafts
By Tristan Gallagher

These Gorgeous file Boxes created by Susan I. Jones and featured as a project in Beacon Adhesive’s booth at Winter CHA would make a fabulous Mother’s day gift. Cleverly hide a gift within this gift, perhaps jewelry or better yet a menu to choose her meal of choice (prepared by you of course!) Afterwards it could serve as a place for Mom to keep recipes, photos or ever-changing phone numbers, emails and addresses.
Continue Reading…

Find our Golden Tickets at Spring Market!

May 7th, 2009 in News & Events
By Lisa Fulmer

Spring Quilt Market is right around the corner—May 15-17 in Pittsburg. If you are going, be sure to visit us in Booth 640. We have hidden 10 Golden Tickets in our stack of catalogs that we will hand out in our booth…each redeemable for a free book!

Click here for our Schoolhouse schedule and find out when you can meet our authors in our booth. They will be on-hand to tell you more about the inspiration behind their books, share classroom tips, and autograph bookplates for you.

When you get there, ask us about our Show Special too! We look forward to seeing you!
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Weekly Giveaway: Gift Box Studio® Life

May 7th, 2009 in Contests
By Tristan Gallagher

This is a fun one!!! This week’s giveaway, Gift Box Studio Life can be used for gifting or be a gift itself. This book is full of a fabulous collection of reversible gift boxes, cards and envelopes with a wide assortment of coordinating embellishments all using patterns designed by fabric designer Jennifer Sampou. All items easily pop out and are ready to mix-and-match for a unique and savvy gifting expression. The embellishments alone in various shapes and designs will get you all excited. Throw in some ribbon and viola, fabulous little gift parcels. The palette is yummy, the paper quality feels great and the designs … so cool.

For a chance to win post a comment here or on our Facebook page (where this blog post will show up in the feed) and let us know how you would creatively fill your GBS box.

One lucky winner will receive a free Gift Box Studio Life on Monday morning, May 11. We’ll pick one commenter at random and announce the winner later that day. Good luck!

Animals on parade in Kentucky

May 6th, 2009 in News & Events
By Lisa Fulmer

Today we begin a series of blog posts direct from Louisville, Kentucky…where we are exhibiting at the NAMTA (Nat’l Art Materials Trade Assn) show. This is your front row seat to some fabulous displays of art and all the goodies that you need to create it!

Today was set-up day, but we were soooo busy getting the booth ready that we didn’t take any pictures this afternoon. But we snapped a few for you tonight!

Turns out there are two very different types of “nocturnal animals” in Louisville this evening!
Louisville boasts a wonderful collection of life-sized horses, painted by local artists, that stand in front of businesses all over downtown. This parade of horses is called Gallopalooza, in celebration of Louisville and the Derby.
the pub

And…NAMTA held their annual late-night charity fundraiser, called Nocturnal Animals Meet Together Annually, tonight at a downtown pub where all the bartenders and servers wear kilts. The pub is located in a brightly-lit strip called Fourth Street Live. All this art and nightlife is just steps from our hotel and the convention center. But it has been raining off and on here in Louisville, so we just made a brief appearance on “the strip” and came back early for a good night’s sleep (honestly!!)
So tomorrow we begin – the show opens at 10:00am. We are demonstrating the marvels of Lutradur® and Ready-to-Go!® Blank Canvas Books, our two new art surfaces that are sure to be crowd-pleasers!

Celebrate Mothers!

May 6th, 2009 in Behind the Scenes, Inspiration
By Amy Marson, Publisher

With Mothers Day fast approaching I wanted to share my family tradition of how we celebrate Mothers Day. For over 10 years, my 3 sisters, my amazing bonus sister-(in-law) and our Mom have gone away for a long weekend to honor our Mom and the wonder of being Moms ourselves. I have 4 siblings and together we have 11 children. Our family gatherings are fun, long and noisy. I often find myself reaching for the Advil after a marathon 7-hour get together. But on our weekends away it is completely different. We relax, listen to music, do yoga, eat really well, watch movies, shop, do facials and for the past 3 years we have crafted.

My sister Jennie is the inspiration for our crafting and brings all the supplies, family photos and a plan for what we will craft each year (Jennie is sort of like Martha Stewart and a wonderful artist and organizer).

sisters-mom
Continue Reading…

Fearless Design for Every Quilter

May 5th, 2009 in Staff Pick
By Lynn Koolish

fearlesscover One of the things that I really like about being an editor here is that I learn so much from the books I’m working on. In the last few years, a number of the books I’ve edited have either focused on or included discussions of design.

One of my favorite’s is Lorraine Torrence’s recent book Fearless Design for Every Quilter. One of the reasons I like it so much is that the throughout the book, there are examples of how students in Lorraine’s design classes approached a variety of design exercises. You see at least three approaches to each exercise and all are done using fabric so you really see how something might work in a quilt.

What is also unique, is that each student’s exercises are critiqued (by Lorraine and the other students) so you can read about what was successful and what wasn’t.

highly recommend this book both for individuals who want to improve their design skills and for groups who want to work through the exercises together and develop their critique skills.

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Quilting Tips: Calculating Yardage for Quilt Backing

May 5th, 2009 in Quilting Tips Series
By The Tech Editors

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The width of fabric used is an important consideration when calculating the yardage used for a quilt backing. The C&T standard is to assume a 40″ width of fabric (WOF) which conservatively describes quilting fabrics. You may use a different number as long as it matches the fabric actually used in the project. Add from 4″ – 8″ to the width and length of the finished size of the quilt to determine the needed size of the quilt backing. This allows for shrinkage during the quilting process. An extra 4″ is added for small-sized quilts, while an extra 8″ is included for larger size quilts. Also, we add an extra 1/8-1/4 yard to the yardage calculation to allow for crooked cuts off the bolt.

The calculations follow.

For small size quilts with no piecing required:

If the backing cut length is 40″ (WOF) or smaller, then

yardage needed = [backing cut width + 4 1/2"] / 36″

If the backing cut width is 40″ (WOF) or smaller, then

yardage needed = [backing cut length + 4 1/2"] / 36″

For large size quilts requiring a pieced backing:

Using horizontal pieced seams

Backing cut length / 40″ (WOF) = # of pieces needed (round up to the nearest whole number)

yardage needed = [(# of pieces needed x backing cut width) + 9"] / 36″

Using vertical pieced seams

Backing cut width / 40″ (WOF) = # of pieces needed (round up to the nearest whole number)

yardage needed = [(# of pieces needed x backing cut length) + 9"] / 36″

For larger size quilts, you may want to calculate yardage using both vertical and horizontal seaming methods and buy the smaller calculated amount of fabric. Remember to cut off the selvages before piecing the backing.

My Mother, The Drama Queen

May 5th, 2009 in Free Projects, Papercrafts
By Tristan Gallagher

theater

Is your Mother a drama queen? Chances are, no. But we bet she would still enjoy an evening at the theater.

Check out how designer Daniela Costa transformed a Ready-to-Go! Shadowbox into a “Dramatic Theater.” How perfect an “envelope” this would make for your expression of love and appreciation as well as a place to tuck in some actual tickets. After all those years of sweeping after you it’s time to sweep your Mom off to say… dinner and a show?
Continue Reading…

Giveaway Winners Announcement

May 4th, 2009 in Contests
By Danielle Dews

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We have many winners to announce today! First, congratulations to Kathie who won last week’s giveaway of the Timtex Craft Pack.

As a special thanks to our blog readers, for the next two weeks you can get 20% off your purchase of Timtex Craft Packs. Simply mention discount code WG20117 when you place your order with C&T via phone (800.284.1114) or at our web site (enter discount code where noted during checkout) on or before May 18, 2009.

Second, congratulations to the following 12 randomly selected winners of the Sidewinder bobbin winder giveaway :

Bridget Wideman
SONJA H. HANSEN
Kathy
Dale Anne
Karla
Marion
Sue Bleiweiss
Helene Bjorseth
Hazel Spindler
simply sarah
Jane L. Splawn
Ellen

We ended up having 13 Sidewinders to give away – one more than we thought we had – so we awarded the extra Sidewinder to Peg for being the first to make us laugh (so hard that some of us cried, I think) with her hilarious description of bobbin winding gone wrong.

Thank you all for participating and for your fabulous comments; you really have some great stories.

C&T Publishing is a group of quilters and crafters dedicated to publishing products tailored to our audience. This blog is where we break away from book schedules and marketing campaigns to focus on what drives us to be creative and how this creativity manifests itself in our every day lives.