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.
Lynn Koolish
New life for orphan quilt blocks
Quite a few years ago, I took a design/improvisational piecing workshop presented by my guild. I made these three blocks, which have been sitting in my “I don’t know what to do with these” drawer since I made them. While editing Rayna Gillman’s book, Create Your Own Free-Form Quilts, I started thinking about applying her process to these blocks. I sliced them up and started adding in other fabrics, following her “don’t think, just sew” advice. All of the piecing was improvisational, (Continue Reading...)
Monday is giveaway day!
I’m so lucky to be Katie Pasquini Masopust’s Editor. It’s so inspiring working on her books!
Her new book, Inspirations in Design for the Creative Quilter: Exercises Take You From Still Life to Art Quilt is no exception.
Katie begins by explaining how to set up an all-white still life that is the starting point for the explorations in the book. The still lifes are easy to set up using every-day items that you paint white.
I was totally amazed by how many different (Continue Reading...)
What a difference the fabric makes
When my friend Pam wanted to make a baby quilt, I suggested this Buzzing Bumble Bees pattern from Alex Anderson’s Baby Quilts with Love:
Pam had seen two quilts that I had made using the same pattern.
I love the Asian fabrics that Pam picked out…and the graceful crane prints are perfect for this baby whose family name is Crane.
How much thread do you need to quilt?
I am personally a big fan of Superior Threads. I like their products and I like the people who run the company. While reading their June 2011 newsletter, I came across the following article. I have never seen this information presented so succinctly, that I wanted to pass it on (reprinted with permission).
I also highly recommend that you sign up for their monthly email newsletter, it has great educational information, good deals on thread, and a “superior joke” every month from (Continue Reading...)
Spring cleaning bonanza
Every year we do spring cleaning at the office. This year we barely made it–cleaning day was June 15th, one week before the official start of summer. Everyone is responsible for cleaning their own office or cubie plus helping out with all the common areas.
The counter in the reception area becomes the “dumping ground” for anything you don’t need, but think some one else might be able to use.
Would you believe that almost everything you see here was snatched up (Continue Reading...)
Why I Like Working at C&T
Like at many companies, people often bring in food left over from parties and such.
But, at how many companies, do you find a note like the one above?
Next C&T Group Quilt?
Now that we’re done with the Van Gogh Slice Quilt (which by the way, raised over $3,000 for the NAMTA Foundation) we’re trying to decide what to do for next year’s raffle quilt, and we want your suggestions.
The criteria are:
It must be a familiar / recognizable / iconic work of art.
It needs to be in the public domain (generally meaning it was created over 100 years ago)
It needs to reasonably translate to fabric.
That’s it. Leave us your comments (Continue Reading...)
fast2sew™ Ultimate Seam Guide
I put the new fast2sew™ Ultimate Seam Guide on my machine this weekend to try it out. I like that it makes it really easy to sew a nice 1/4″ seam–not always easy on my machine.
But I love the way it makes is super easy to sew on the diagonal, like when you are making binding or half-square triangle blocks.
I don’t think I’ll have it on my machine all the time, so I punched a little hole in one corner, so I (Continue Reading...)
Where would we be without TAP?
Transfer Artist Paper (TAP), I just love it. One of my favorite things about it is that you can scratch away the polymer around something printed on the TAP so you don’t have excess polymer around an irregularly-shaped shape, such as a number, when you transfer it. I also love the way it transfers to Lutradur.
For this clock, I used the Ultralight Lutradur so the fabric and batting underneath would show through. And of course, I just had to distress (Continue Reading...)
Collage+Cloth Really Does=Quilt
Recently Judi Warren Blaydon, author of Collage+Cloth=Quilt was at East Bay Heritage Quilters (EBHQ) and I was able to peek in on the two day workshop.
On the first day of the workshop, after a preliminary collage building exercise, the students started making collages from photos they had brought. From there, they traced a simplified design onto a transparent surface so it could be taken to a copy shop and enlarged and printed.
On the second day, students started putting fabric up on (Continue Reading...)
