If you are anything like me, you like to begin the new year with a new look for your dining room. Lucky for us, C&T Publishing author, Terrie Sandelin, has been hard at work creating a free mini-quilt placemat project for us using scraps of Kaffe Fasset’s fabrics. The project uses the 13-Square foundation from Terrie’s book Miniatures in Minutes for the pieced squares. Click here to automatically begin downloading the project instructions, and in no time your dining area will have fresh appeal!
Terrie’s blog is jam-packed with free projects and other goodies. She revisited and revised the concept of school supplies with this pretty file folder she made using fast2fuse interfacing. She just posted a tutorial for this project here on her blog.
![file folder front[4]](http://www.ctpubblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/file-folder-front4.jpg "file folder front[4]")
![file folder open[4]](http://www.ctpubblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/file-folder-open4.jpg "file folder open[4]")
The author of Miniatures in Minutes, Terrie Sandelin has developed a technique to create gorgeous miniatures with minimal time and effort. You can visit her website for project ideas, classes and more.
Calling all quilters, sewers and crafters! American Patchwork & Quilting is challenging all of us to join up and participate in their “Make a Pillowcase, Make a Difference” campaign for charity.
To take part in the pillowcase project, just make a pillowcase, find a a shop hosting One Million Pillowcase Challenge events in your area, and donate the pillowcase to the shop! Every pillowcase will go towards making a difference in your community. Your pillowcases will provide comfort for a cancer patient, hope for a foster child, encouragement for a battered woman, or beauty for a nursing home resident. Over 7,400 pillowcases have already been donated, but lots of help is needed to reach the goal of 1 million pillowcases.
“We are asking quilters to make and donate 1,000,000 pillowcases to local charities to show the world how caring quilters are. As I travel the country, I often hear stories of generous quilt shops and quilters who have turned their hobby into a conduit for good in their communities. That is the same charitable spirit that drives this challenge,” said APQ editor Jennifer Keltner.
APQ has set up an online counter to track the number of donations. They also have free pillowcase patterns available for download and tips on where to donate. This is a great example of how one person can really make a difference. The C&T staff will be setting up a pillowcase lunch hour in 2010. How will you contribute?
The super lucky winner for this week’s really big giveaway is Donna! Wow, what a way to start off the new year! A bundle of 8 goodies: Ready-to-Go!® Blank Board Blocks, Carol Doak’s Foundation Paper, Simple Foundations Translucent Vellum Paper, Lutradur® Mixed Media Sheets, Liquitex® Acrylic Paints, Liquitex® Acrylic ink!, 3-in-1 Advanced Craft Glue, and Liquid Laminate.
Since Donna won’t be at CHA we’re happy to hear she’ll be tuning in to our daily blog posts and tweets from CHA. For those of you who are going to Anaheim, be sure to stop by the Beacon Adhesives booth #3069 on Monday, January 25th at 4:00pm—Lisa Fulmer will show you how to make the Steampunk Angel! The complete list of C&T activities in Anaheim is on our website.
We kind of like the idea of posting more robust giveaways and think you will too! So the new game plan is to post bigger and better giveaways every two weeks. We’ll start next Tuesday, January 26 and announce the winner on February 8th. Stay tuned!
One of the things I love most about Lutradur® is that it doesn’t tear or fray. It’s perfect for durable pouches and pockets. I’ll be in the Graphic Products booth #4061 on Tuesday 1/26, showing CHA Trade Show attendees how to make this super easy 4″ square accordion-fold wallet to store or travel with artist trading cards. We’ll be using Liquitex® Matte Gel Medium to collage the wallet covers with beautiful Unryu papers from Thailand, made with strands of kozo (fibers from the bark of mulberry trees), mango leaves, and other organic textures.
A creative life is filled with challenges and rewards, puzzles and curiosities. This ongoing series of poems attempts to express the “Aha”s and “What if”s, the deep ponderings and casual observations of an inquiring mind trying to make sense of reality. May it serve, for you, as a bit of “Everyday Inspiration” along your own creative path.
And I thought
I was
The only one
Who felt
Like King Kong
One day
And tiny
And timid
The next.
Once you talk
To people
You find out
We all
Feel that way…
Our friends at Walnut Hollow are joining us at our 3rd annual Stay-n-Play Café at the CHA Trade Show. At the Café, each attendee gets a Ready-to-Go! Blank Canvas Book. Then they travel at their own pace between 6 different stations to try new products and techniques from C&T and our partnering manufacturers. People will stay, play and be inspired for two hours, and leave feeling confident with their new skills and ideas to share with their customers, students and colleagues.
C&T author Rebekah Meier has designed this gorgeous canvas book for Walnut Hollow that shows off their super cool Creative Metal™ line of tools and metal crafting supplies. She also used our favorite - Liquitex paints and inks!
If you are attending the trade show, you won’t want to miss this big event on Sunday 1/24/10 at 6pm! Sign up today at www.chashow.org for workshop #0609. It’s a HUGE bang for your buck – lots of free samples, too!
Ever since I saw Mary Link’s no-sew animals in her book 100+ No-Sew Fabric Crafts for Kids I knew had to get my hands on some of my own. When the project was posted as a freebie last month, I knew my time had come. And the timing really couldn’t have been better. The holidays were right around the corner and I was eager to find something I could make for family members and friends that I could work on in front of the TV, and wasn’t too time-consuming, materials-heavy, or labor intensive. The no-sew slotted fabric animals were perfect! Continue Reading…
I love seeing what people create with our interfacings and Lutradur® Mixed Media Sheets. Mixed media and fiber artist Sue Bleiweiss recently made a beautiful journal using Timtex™ and Lutradur®. The inside is lined with painted Lutradur and filled with a combination of blank drawing paper and hand painted papers. Click here to visit Sue’s blog to learn more. Don’t forget to share what you make with our unique line of art surfaces.
Join C&T Publishing’s Lisa Fulmer this Sunday night, January 17th on Inspired at Home Radio with Tiffany Windsor. The show will broadcast live from 7:00pm – 8:00 p.m. ET.
Lisa, both a talented artist and the Marketing Manager here at C&T, will be talking about the launch of our new Liquitex® Surface Design Center. If you’ve ever been curious about surface design or painting on fabric, don’t miss this opportunity to get all the buzz and industry information!
Click here for the link to the live online radio program.
Our new author Lura Schwarz Smith is in an exhibit called “Imagery and Imagination” at the La Conner Quilt Museum in La Conner, Washington that runs January 13th – March 28th, 2010. Lura will be there for a special reception, lecture and exhibit tour on Saturday January 16th at 1pm.
Lura is the author of the February release Secrets of Digital Quilting—From Camera to Quilt. Once you see her work, you will understand why she was asked to feature in an exhibit.
One of her quilts was included in the 100 Best American Quilts of the 20th Century.
To learn more about Lura visit her website at Thedigitalquilt.com
