Monthly Archives: February 2010

Ruthmary’s Staff Pick: Cut Loose Quilts by Jan Mullen

February 10th, 2010 in Staff Pick
By Ruthmary Schauer

One of my favorite C&T Publishing books is Jan Mullen’s Cut-Loose Quilts. It has been my go-to project and idea book since it was published in 2001, and I’ve made dozens of quilts from the projects inside.

The quilt projects in the book are fast, fun, easy, and delightful. The quilts I have made won’t win me any awards, but they aren’t meant to! What Jan’s relaxed style does win her readers is freedom—freedom from cutting restrictions and rigid construction methods. She gives the quilter room to get improvisational with their project.

Once I followed instructions for a project or two, I felt confident emulating Jan’s free-spirited style without having to keep picking up the book. This is a great exercise for beginners, or for veteran quilters who find it hard NOT to cut things precisely and exactly to specs.

Here are pictures of quilts I have made using Jan’s “Roman Stripez” project:

Stewart the Owl Pillow Giveaway from Cuore!

February 9th, 2010 in Contests
By Danielle Dews

Little Birds, an upcoming May release and the first book in our Design Collective series, showcases a select group of fresh, contemporary designers and 26 adorable, one-of-a-kind bird projects for sewers, quilters, and crafters.

One of the contributing designers is Mika Yamamura, an Etsy seller and blogger who’s handmade wares include heartfelt pillows, plushies, notecards, and other accessories and ornaments. We are very excited to have her creation Chewy the Owl (below) as a featured project in Little Birds.

Giveaway Winner: National Nonwovens WoolFelt and Felting Books

February 8th, 2010 in Contests
By Tristan Gallagher

It’s that time again when we announce the latest giveaway winner! Step right up MadCat Marion and receive your two fat quarter packs of National Nonwovens’ Woolfelt, and two books: Embellishing with Wool by Mary Stori and Fast, Fun & Easy ^®Needle Felting by Lynne Farris. Now you can make those softies!

Thank you to all our blog readers for leaving comments here and on Facebook. We love hearing what you have to say! Tune in tomorrow for the next big giveaway post.

Susan Brubaker Knapp’s Orchids: Sensuality Stitched Exhibition

February 8th, 2010 in News & Events
By Susan Brubaker Knapp

For a few years, I’ve belonged to a wonderful group of seven fiber artists from the Charlotte area, Fiber Art Options. It includes me, Nancy G. Cook, K. Grace Howes, Deborah M. Langsam, Janet A. Lasher, Linda Stegall, and P.J. Howard. This weekend, our group exhibition, “Orchids: Sensuality Stitched,” opens at Daniel Stowe Botanical Garden (DSBG), near Charlotte. This is my first group show, and I’m pretty excited!

For a while, we’ve been wanting to have a group exhibition to show our work, and about a year ago, we decided on an approach: We would all take photos of orchids, mainly at DSBG, and then create a series of pieces based on these photos. The Garden has an “Orchid Spectacular” event that runs from January through March, and loves working with groups on events that will bring people to DSBG and tie in with their events.

Our goals were to increase our production, to work in a series (which several of us had not done before) and to create an exhibition that could travel to different places after its initial showing at Daniel Stowe. Lots of cities have orchid shows, so our exhibition would be appealing to many different venues.

I love creating quilts from photos I take, so I was very excited about working in this concept. I chose three subjects, partly for their flamboyant color, and decided that I would create each piece as a wholecloth painted quilt. This is something I’ve only started doing in the past year or so, and I wanted to improve my skills. Continue Reading…

Everyday Inspiration

February 6th, 2010 in Inspiration
By Diane Pedersen

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.

Sometimes
It’s like
Walking through quicksand
To get through the day.
Why is that?

Interpret This! Challenge

February 5th, 2010 in News & Events
By Danielle Dews

One of our blog readers, Libby Fife, emailed me the other day about Interpret This!, the new monthly textile art challenge group she is co-sponsoring with Debra Spincic. Their concept is to bring together Internet based artists with a common goal:

to create a body of work in an organized intimate group setting using photos that are personal to the artist as the creative launching point.

The group’s twelve member artists will be making fiber art based on photographs supplied by each participant. Then the artwork will be revealed to the larger online textile art community via the blog.

I am really impressed with not only the participants’ beautiful artwork, but also their commitment to revealing all aspects of the challenge to the larger community. It’s easy to be drawn into the stories revealed on the blog when so much background information and detailed description is provided by the artists.

Happy Birthday January Babies

February 4th, 2010 in Behind the Scenes
By Danielle Dews

One of the “perks” I enjoy most as a C&T employee are the monthly birthday celebrations. Lynne, our fabulous receptionist, chooses an afternoon when all of the month’s birthday people are going to be here and then surprises everyone with cookies, or cupcakes, or in the case of last week, what I like to call “gargantuan” cupcakes.

Usually Lynne picks up the birthday goodies in advance of the actual “celebration time.” But she tries not to bring them in too far in advance because as soon as they appear in the reception area, certain C&T employees begin swarming. Some of us just hover in anticipation for a few minutes then go on about our business. This time Gailen and Liz tried to persuade Lynne to move the “celebration time” up a few hours, but to no avail.

When it’s finally time, Lynne makes the announcement over the intercom and within a few seconds people start literally running towards the reception area. It’s pretty funny to see how excited people get—there are no shortages of sweet teeth in this office!

Quilting Tips: Dealing with Thread Ends

February 3rd, 2010 in Quilting Tips Series
By The Tech Editors

There is a tool used by quilters to help deal with loose thread ends on the surface of their quilts. It is a self-threading or easy-threading needle, pictured below.

This needle has 2 eyes in the head. The lower one is designed the way we are all familiar with – after squinting, ease the tip of the thread through the eye of the needle and pull. However, the second eye is designed so that a length of thread can be pulled down through an opening at the top and it will “pop” into place. Then, the needle behaves in the familiar way, you stitch and pull, stitch and pull, and the thread does not easily pop back out of the opening.

The threading of the needle is the step that is simplified with this tool, so it becomes an easy task to thread the needle, knot the ends and bury many individual ends of thread when using this tool.

Charlotte Warr Andersen uses this type of needle to easily handle any tail ends resulting from machine quilting. Further information on machine quilting and burying loose thread ends can be found in her book One Line at a Time.

Happy Quilting,

The Tech Editors

This article is part of the Quilting Tips from the Tech Editors tutorial series. Recent tutorials include:

Our time at CHA

February 2nd, 2010 in News & Events
By Lisa Fulmer

100_3017 Phew…what a whirlwind of a week we had in Anaheim at the CHA Craft Super Show and the Winter Convention and Trade Show! It took a few days, but I have finally made a respectable dent in the post-travel mayhem of dirty laundry, craft supplies, and snapshots to sort out. I was hoping to post here a few times from the show, but we were on the go, non-stop, 24/7 – no time for sitting at the computer!

For me, the highlight of every CHA show is always the people. Nothing beats connecting in person with friends, colleagues, and customers to relish and rave about all that is new in our wonderful world of craft. Of course, C&T has some new and totally rave-worthy products – the Liquitex® Surface Design Center, Lutradur® Mixed Media Sheets, and our upcoming new book imprint, Stash—Fabric Arts for a Handmade Lifestyle.

So after the first day of the Super Show, we braced ourselves for the weekend masses expected on day 2. We built it and they came! The C&T demo table at the Lisa Liza Lou booth was full all day – Creative Troupers Tina Kay and Joy Lily kept people happy and busy with creative ATC and fabric painting projects.

Joy shows how to paint white tone-on-tone printed fabric with gradient colors of Liquitex paints

Tina shows how to create ATCs with upcycled papers, using Liquitex paints and mediums.

Tina shows how to create ATCs with upcycled papers and Lutradur, using Liquitex paints and mediums.

Fabulous Fiber Scarf Night

February 1st, 2010 in Inspiration
By Amy Marson, Publisher

Question: What happens when you combine your mom, your sisters and lots of fiber?

Answer: You get fabulous fiber scarves!

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.