Now’s the time to make some adorable holiday projects to decorate your home and give as gifts. And now is the time to get the how-to help on the cheap!
This book has plenty of easy fabric projects that you and your family will have tons of fun making – and this week it’s priced at half-off—only $8.78. The set of matching plastic templates for the gingerbread house and sleigh is also on sale—only $5.oo.
Order yours now – these special prices are only available by ordering online at ctpub.com.
Don’t forget the fast2fuse!!
Wow! I just got my copy of Quiltmaker’s 100 Blocks yesterday – what a gem! Today’s top designers, including many C&T authors, submitted 12″ blocks to the magazine last spring. There’s a wonderful variety of block designs to choose from—appliqué, piecing, and mixed techniques.
Quiltmaker has big give-aways planned too…100 of their readers will win blocks, and there’s a “Big Bundle” prize that includes lots of C&T books! You can win a copy of this keepsake issue right here on our blog too – just leave a comment and we’ll pick a winner tomorrow!
Follow the 100 Blocks Blog Tour all week for inspiration and ideas…oh, and of course, more give-aways! Look for this issue in your local quilt shop next week, or purchase online.
Our popular Quick & Easy Block Tool is now available as an app for your iPhone or iPod Touch. We are so excited about our first foray into these kinds of handy, downloadable applications! We have launched with rave reviews from our authors and the many people who have already bought their copy on the iTunes store. Click here for all the details!
To celebrate our newest digital masterpiece, we want to give away 3 free downloads to you, our lovely blog readers!
You can have 1, 2, or 3 chances to win – it’s up to you! Here’s how:
1. Post one comment – just to say “pick me, pick me!”
2. Post a second separate comment - to tell us you shared a link to this give-away post on your own blog, Facebook or Twitter page
3. Post a third separate comment – to tell us you added one of our gorgeous blog badges to your own blog (include your blog address)
Your comments (either here on the blog, or under this blog note on our Facebook fan page) must be posted by 9:00am PST on Monday, 11/16/09. Good luck!!
If you do download your own copy, we’d be ever so grateful if you’d post a review on the iTunes Store. We really, really, really want to know what you think of this app—is it handy, does it work right, how will you use it?
Since one of the terrific features of the tool is the barrel design (it’s squared off so it won’t roll off your desk or sewing table), we positioned her lying down on her desk. Only she was having trouble, um, not rolling off. I’m not kidding…she was trying to lie on her side, perfectly straight, and she rolled backwards and almost fell off her desk! We didn’t catch that on tape, but it gave us a serious case of the giggles that carried through when we did have tape rolling. I even kept mispronouncing her name, so on our third try, you hear me pausing to concentrate on saying her name correctly without laughing. The picture on her office door is one of our how-to shots which shows that you can use the tool to stuff a doll’s head…and we put a picture of Gailen’s face over the doll face.
We also caught a glimpse of PacMan and the Ghost running through the maze of cubicles in our office. Our Publisher Amy made fabulous costumes (with a whole bolt of fast2fuse!) for her son Parker and his pal Will…and they surprised us with a guest appearance.
Amy painted the fabric for these costumes with Liquitex® Acrylic Inks!—notice how bright the colors are? She needed less than half an ounce of each ink color, mixed with lots of water, to paint the fabric for the whole costume! Now that’s some amazing pigment! She made the ghostly orange herself by mixing the red and yellow inks. That Liquitex is good stuff.
Daniela Costa from The Art Life (and a proud member of our Creative Troupe) is featuring one of our Ready-to-Go!® Blank Board Books in her latest scrapbook kit. The kit includes the 6″x6″ black board book, along with all the papers and embellishments you need for some wicked fun! Daniela develops a new kit each month—you’re going to want to bookmark her site for shopping! This Saturday afternoon, you’ll find her at Scrapbook Territory in Berkeley, CA doing Halloween make-n-takes with our Ready-to-Go!® Mini Shadow Boxes…such an adorable holiday decoration!
For more inspiration using blank board books – check out our Flickr Gallery. Have a hauntingly happy Halloween!
In August, we co-hosted a crafting event, during which we offered a charity raffle for the attendees. They could win private tutorials on a variety of topics from basic sewing to photography to quilting. Our C&T staff experts are each volunteering 2 hours of their time to teach the winners a new skill.
The first winner to redeem her prize was Cindy deRosier—she won a basic sewing lesson from our Creative Director, Gailen Runge. The timing was perfect, as Cindy wanted to make this adorable crayon costume for her son to wear on Halloween.
Gailen loved Cindy’s confidence. “Cindy was not afraid to try something new. It was exciting for me to see her just jump right in! She got to know her sewing machine better, and now that she has the basics down, she can stitch up anything she wants!”
Cindy deRosier, scrapbooker AND sewer!
Cindy emailed us shortly after her sewing lesson. “I learned so much and am thrilled with how much we got accomplished. Since our lesson a little over a week ago, I’ve shortened two more shirts and hemmed three pairs of pants! It feels so good to finally know what I’m doing.” Way to go, Cindy!! Click here to see more pics of her lesson.
Gailen donated the raffle funds collected for her tutorial to her local charity of choice, The Dunakin Children’s Family Trust, set up to assist the children of slain police officer Mark Dunakin.
We will keep y’all posted on the other winners as they redeem their raffle prizes, too!
Santa Clara County Convention Center, home of PIQF
Each year I look forward to this show, where I get to shop for the best fabrics and notions from dozens and dozens of my favorite retailers and designers. I splurged on some gorgeous hand-painted and hand-dyed fabrics, cashmere roving, and of course…the batiks. I love the booth demos too; I learned how to paint lace and work with fusible powder.
But the best part of the day for me is the award-winning exhibit. I am so inspired by these quilt artists, I hope one day to acquire even a fraction of the skills and talent they possess. I snapped pictures of just some of the pieces I really liked – click here for my own personal tour of the show – enjoy!
Detail of "Monterey Bay—Fisherman's Wharf" made by the employees of Back Porch Fabrics in Pacific Grove, CA.
I uploaded lots more pictures to our Flickr page – you’ll see more of our authors and lots of fresh, fun booths that I thought were inspiring.
Paula Nadelstern signing books for Kaleidoscope fans
Susan Brubaker Knapp at her first book signing
We held a breakfast meeting this morning with retailers to show them our new Liquitex® Surface Design Center, and one lucky quilt shop in the Philippines won our drawing for a free, fully-loaded rack of fabric-painting goodness. In the evening, we conducted a Business Seminar for shops to learn more about using online tools to promote their classes and increase attendance.
Traffic seemed a little busier today, compared to yesterday. It’s always so nice to see people reconnecting, everyons is so happy to catch up on news since the last show.
Enjoy the pictures, I hope we captured some of the essence and energy of the show so you can feel like you were there!
Well, Saturday was actually Day 2 – on Friday before Market opened, we had a wonderful series of schoolhouse sessions featuring several of our authors, and we gave away some books to lucky customers at each session. We began Saturday with an early morning Take-n-Teach workshop with Beth Ferrier teaching everyone techniques from her new book More! Hand Appliqué by Machine. Then in our booth, we had a full slate of authors giving autographs, showing off their beautiful quilts, and chatting about their books.
C&T Author Claudia Clark Myers
We launched our new Liquitex® Surface Design Center complete with amazing painted fabric pieces from our team of Surface Design Center Ambassadors. In January, quilt shops around the country will have this handy rack of acrylic paints, inks and mediums – making it easy for quilters and fabric artists to get everything in one place!
Liquitex® Surface Design Center
Visit our Flickr page for plenty of pictures of our authors, our staff, customers, and some of the fun booths and products on display. So many new fabrics, patterns, books, notions, gadgets and lots of new designers on the scene too. I only got through about half the floor today….I’ll have more to share tomorrow!
Here’s a video tour of booth – I must say, our set-up team did a fabulous job making it look so spiffy!
This week we have knitting and crochet books on sale for only $5 each! Yes, you heard me right…just 5 bucks a book! If you’ve always wanted to learn to knit, now is the perfect time. If you’re already an expert knitter, you’re probably on the look-out for some new projects for the holidays.
Whether you want make something to snuggle in at home, or something to wear for a night out on the town, you’ll find what you’re looking for in our books. At this low price, why not add them all to your library and knit up a storm? But hurry—this offer is for a limited time. Visit the On Sale section of our website every week to stay on top of the best deals.
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.
Now’s the time to make some adorable holiday projects to decorate your home and give as gifts. And now is the time to get the how-to help on the cheap!
Wow! I just got my copy of 
For more inspiration using blank board books – check out our 
This week we have knitting and crochet books on sale for only $5 each! Yes, you heard me right…just 5 bucks a book! If you’ve always wanted to learn to knit, now is the perfect time. If you’re already an expert knitter, you’re probably on the look-out for some new projects for the holidays.
