Monthly Archives: October 2010

Winners of the October Releases Giveaway!

October 18th, 2010 in Contests
By Tristan Gallagher

Congratulations to Kaye Prince and Suzanne Gwynne! They’ve been randomly selected as the winners of our October Releases Giveaway. Thank you so much to everyone who participated by leaving comments here and on Facebook.

More of Carol’s Keepsake Frame Blocks: Six Pointed Star, Dreidel, Candle, Tree

October 16th, 2010 in Free Projects, Quiltmaking
By Danielle Dews

Carol Doak's Keepsake Frame Cards

If Carol Doak’s Keepsake Frame Cards aren’t in your local quilt shop yet, then they will be soon. And in this post you will find another four of Carol’s free keepsake frame block patterns!

The 3″ blocks in the patterns are perfect for use with Keepsake Frame Cards—and these ones are perfect for the upcoming holiday season! If you missed the first two block projects we posted earlier this month, you can see that post here.

Keepsake Frame Block #3: Six pointed star

Click here to download the FREE block project instructions.

Keepsake Frame Block #4: Dreidel

Click here to download the FREE block project instructions

Keepsake Frame Block #5: Candle

Click here to download the FREE block project instructions

Keepsake Frame Block #6: Tree

Click here to download the FREE block project instructions

………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Carol Doak's Keepsake Frame Cards

Carol Doak’s Keepsake Frame Cards include a debossed 3″ square window which makes them perfect for framing and displaying your miniature works of art, including quilt blocks, surface design pieces, mixed media collages, paintings, drawings, and even photos. Add a handwritten greeting on the inside, and it makes a fantastic personalized gift for any occasion.

Everyday Inspiration

October 16th, 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.

Life is filled

With ordinary

Moments.

Perhaps

When you can enjoy

Each one

When it happens

You’ve truly

“Arrived”…

Or maybe

That’s just

Something that happens

When you turn

60…

Award-winning beauty!

October 14th, 2010 in Inspiration
By Lisa Fulmer

I’m so happy for my friend, Dr. Beverly Spurs — she won “Best of Show” at our county fair this summer for this beautiful wall quilt she made from a pattern in Michele Hill’s book, William Morris in Appliqué.

The project in the book is called “Tudor Rose” – the original fusible appliqué instructions on page 57 are for a pillow. Michele interpreted this lovely floral pattern from a silk-embroidered cushion designed by Morris’ daughter, May, in 1892.

I met Beverly last year when I joined my local quilt guild. I get together with her and a great group of women every Tuesday night – we call ourselves “The Twisted Thimbles” because we love to laugh and be silly while we create. I’m only barely able to make quilts myself…I’m the one in the group who usually isn’t quilting, but working on all kinds of other art and craft projects instead.

But our Miss Beverly is not only a proper British woman who drinks proper British tea…she is also a very proper quilter. She has wonderful skills and her fabric selection, piecing and stitching is always gorgeous. She has some very {ahem}, shall we say, firm opinions about the use of fabric fusing in quiltmaking, though. :-) Beverly felt that her compatriot Mr. Morris, being the pioneering hand-craftsman that he was, would have greatly appreciated the time she took to hand appliqué this very intricate pattern using the needleturn technique, rather than a fusible technique. The hours of work that Beverly lovingly put into this wallhanging is astounding to me, I watched her make parts of it…I cannot imagine having the patience to do this myself!

“Best of Show” indeed – congrats, Beverly!

Lura Schwarz Smith & Kerby Smith Quilts on Exhibit

October 13th, 2010 in News & Events
By Lynn Koolish

Cupcakes by Kerby C. Smith—These homemade ginger cupcakes made by a friend were yummy but before Kerby and Lura counld eat them, he had to take their picture. The cupcakes were way too good for ordinary color. Photographed with his point-and-shoot camera and using Photoshop Elements, he printed the digital cotton fabric. The quilt was machine quilted by Sheila Bruner.

We love it when our authors have their quilts on exhibit, and October is a fabulous month to see the work of Lura Schwarz Smith & Kerby Smith, authors of Secrets of Digital Quilting: From Camera to Quilt.

Graffiti Series: Triple Heart by Kerby C. Smith—Kerby usually can find just about any shape he wants in the "Graffiti Wall" if he is patient enough for the ever-changing mural of color and form. However, Valentine's Day was coming up and he couldn't find a heart. So, he tagged the wall himself and photographed it for this piece. Printed on silk charmeuse and machine quilted by Lura.

Special Exhibit at PIQF: From Camera to Quilt

Lura and Kerby have a special exhibit featuring digital fabric in their quilts at Pacific International Quilt Festival, October 14-17th at Santa Clara, CA. They will be at the exhibit throughout the show to answer questions and sign books. This is a great quilt show, and we hope you will stop by to say hello to them if you are able to attend.

Quilt Visions 2010: No Boundaries

The Oceanside Museum of Art hosts the Quilt Visions art quilt show October 24-March 13, with the opening reception October 23, 5-7 pm. Lura and Kerby’s piece, Graffiti Series: Nail Heads 2 will be one of the 39 pieces in the exhibit.

QUILTS=ART=QUILTS

While teaching at Quilting by the Lake in Syracuse, NY, this summer Kerby and Lura were able to visit the Schweinfurth Art Center in Albany, NY for the first time. The Quilts=Art=Quilts annual art quilt show is on view there October 31-January 9, 2011. The show features 95 quilts by 81 artists worldwide and Lura is honored to have two of her pieces juried into this show.

The Quilt Show

And if that isn’t enough, The Quilt Show with Alex Anderson and Ricky Tims online program, episode 702, “Quilting in the Digital Age” features Lura and Kerby.

Graffiti Series: Nail Heads 2 by Kerby and Lura Smith—This was the first quilt that Lura and Kerby made together and they are still married! Actually, they found that it was a great experience working as a team. This quilt was juried into Quilt Vision 2010 at the Oceanside Museum of Art in Southern California.

Ultra-Light Lutradur® Dandelion Pillow Cover

October 12th, 2010 in Free Projects, Sewing, Surface Design & Mixed Media
By Tristan Gallagher

Creative Troupe member Marion Boddy-Evans has incorporated Ultra-light Lutradur^® into home decor. Cleverly created dandelion embellishments adorn this pillow, highlighting the airy qualities of our new Ultra-light Lutradur^®. It perfectly conveys that ready to blow away feeling of the oh so intricate, seeding dandelion. Read on for project instructions.

Dandelion Pillow Cover

Designed by Marion Boddy-Evans

Materials:

1 qty – Ultra-light Lutradur^® letter size sheet
Liquitex^® acrylic paint or ink – white and bright yellow
16″ x 16″ green fabric or grass print
2 qty 3″ x 16″ & 2 qty 3″ x 21″ strips of solid fabric (for border strips)
21″ x 21″ plain or coordinating fabric for back

(fabric dimensions should be adapted to your cushion size)

Instructions:

Working on newspaper, thin your yellow and white paint with water (so it doesn’t fill in the gaps between the fibers). Paint half of Ultra-light Lutradur^® sheet yellow and half white. Allow to dry.
Tear 3 large circles (approx 3″ diameter) and 2 small circles (approx. 2″ diameter) out of both the yellow and white Lutradur^®. Be sure to tear it rather than cut it to acquire the looseness of the dandelion. These do not have to be perfect circles.
Arrange the yellow Lutradur^® on your piece of fabric, pin in place. Either machine or hand stitch about a third of the way from the bottom, a series of lines of varying length, radiating out as a star.
Stitch a stem using satin stitch. (Alternatives: paint a stem, or use bias binding)
Place the white Lutradur^® on top of the yellow, and stitch another star.
Sew on the 3″ border of the cover front.
Add a back to the cover in your preferred style, whether overlapping , buttons, or zip.

How do you pick a book cover?

October 11th, 2010 in Behind the Scenes
By Amy Marson, Publisher

Selecting a book cover is a bit like choosing the name of your kid. Once it’s done, it is there to stay. The book is printed and basically stuck with that cover for the duration of it’s life. In all my 10 years at C&T Publishing we have only re-jacketed one book.

This is how the book-naming process goes at C&T: We meet a few times a week to develop title and cover concepts. There are several people in the meeting and we spend most of the time working on title and marketing, but my favorite part is cover selection. This is the first time we see all the images in the book and it is truly inspiring. The flat quilt shots, the set shots…everything is eye candy.

Our most recent meeting was for Joen Wolfrom’s book that is coming out next fall. It is going to be beyond breathtaking. OMG there are so many images in this book that we all burst our laughing when color copies of them were spread out on the conference table. Luckily we had one of our super-talented designers, Kris, in the room and she was able to quickly determine a direction by selecting one quilt as an anchor and then a few others to compliment the design. Once again, a huge THANK YOU to our talented design team for finding a solution out of chaos.

We have to pick one?

Everyday Inspiration

October 9th, 2010 in Inspiration
By Diane Pedersen

All those

“Nothing” moments

In between

The memorable

Ones…

What happens

To them?????

Scrappy Pumpkin Tee Shirt

October 8th, 2010 in Free Projects, Surface Design & Mixed Media
By Lisa Fulmer

Our Business Development Manager, Mary Wruck, designed this project for her daughter, Emma. I thought it was so unbelievably cute – I just had to write it up and share it with all of you! It’s a great way to use up pretty paper scraps, too.

• TAP® Transfer Artist Paper
• Plain tee shirt – white or light color
• Scraps of pretty patterned papers
• Black marker, pencil
• White paper, white card stock
• Glue stick, scissors, Exacto® blade
• All-in-one inkjet printer/copier
• Firm ironing surface and iron

Use a black marker to draw a thick outline of a pumpkin with 4 segments on white cardstock
Copy the pumpkin on to white paper to make a master copy
Use an Exacto blade to trim out the inside of each section of the pumpkin on cardstock to create a stencil
Use the stencil to mark and cut out scrap papers to fit inside each section – use a different patterned paper for each section to make it scrappy, and don’t forget the stem!
Glue each of your trimmed scraps onto your master copy
Load a sheet of TAP into your inkjet printer and copy your scrappy pumpkin on to the TAP, following package instructions
Trim your pumpkin out of the TAP sheet and place it image-side-down on to your tee shirt
Press the image on to your shirt with your iron, following the TAP package instructions
If desired, you can also print out some Halloween words on to TAP to go with your pumpkin – just be sure to reverse the words on your computer before printing them out

Inspired by the C&T Blog

October 7th, 2010 in Inspiration
By Megan Scott

We love hearing about how our blog and our books inspire you. Recently, a reader wrote in to share her inspirational story. She was browsing all the free projects on our blog and came across the “Bird on a Branch Table Runner” by Piece O’ Cake Designs. The project is featured in the book Appliqué Outside the Lines by Becky Goldsmith & Linda Jenkins.

A while ago I stumbled upon one of your free projects. I come from a quilting background, but for the last 7-10 years I’ve been focusing more on rug hooking and I’ve discovered that a lot of quilt patterns are very compatible with rug hooking. I used your Bird on a Branch pattern to make a rug and it turned out so cute – thought you’d enjoy seeing it!
Thanks so much,
Gayle in UT

Here is the original Bird on a Branch finished project:

And here is Gayle’s rug hooked rendition:So cute Gayle! Thanks for sharing.

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.