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.
Category Archives: Behind the Scenes
Quilt Market Spring 2011 recap—on the show floor
I arrived in Salt Lake City to set up our Quilt Market booth, stayed throughout the show, and left the morning after booth tear-down. Our presence at the show was the culmination of so much work over the past year or so—it’s kind of mind-boggling how quickly the week of the show went by in comparison to the previous weeks and months we had spent planning, coordinating, packing, and prepping.
After all that time spent focusing on our own presence, it was (Continue Reading...)
Spring Quilt Market in Salt Lake City – The Tulips!
We had a great time in SLC at the Spring 2011 Quilt Market Trade Show. The weather was perfect and the show itself was tremendous.But the most amazing sight were the tulips at the Mormon Temple.
I would guesstimate over one hundred thousand tulips and other flowers including pansies, mums, poppies and many more. On Thursday morning I walked with Becky Goldsmith from Piece ‘O Cake Designs and we stumbled upon the block where there were flowers in abundance lining the (Continue Reading...)
Celebrating a decade of Shirley
What does it mean to work 10 years at one company? Do many people do that anymore? We just celebrated Shirley Montano’s 10 year Anniversary and it was great fun. For 10-year anniversaries, we have a celebratory luncheon and a special dessert of the feted person’s choice and we all take advantage of the opportunity to recall our memories and tell stories.
What I remember about Shirley is her indomitable spirit, her great sense of fun and her ability to sell (Continue Reading...)
Just Curious
A few weeks ago I went to a conference in NY and had the opportunity to visit an artist/ author that I had met the year before at the annual Book Expo. Margaret Peot is such a talented artist, she has a newly released book for kids about making art with ink blots, called appropriately, Inkblot, Drip, Splash and Squish Your Way to Creativity. It just came out and you can find it on Amazon.
She invited me to where she (Continue Reading...)
Turning Failures into Design Oppportunities
If you’ve read any of my blog posts, you know that I love playing with paint and other mixed media products. A few weeks ago, I thought it would be fun to try embossing batting with lace—I’d read about the technique in Rebekah Meier’s book Fabric Art Collage—40+ Mixed Media Techniques. It turned out that I didn’t have any lace that I thought would work, but I did have some latch-hook rug canvas and thought that the grid would make a good (Continue Reading...)
Winners of our Get Organized giveaway!
Congratulations to our four winners of a super cool ArtBin container!
“Desperate for help organizing stashes of crafting supplies that spill into multiple rooms of the house!!!!” — Liz
“Way cool…spring cleaning and clearing has begun indeed!!!” — Rebecca
“The only totally organized room in my house is my sewing room. It’s the rest of the house that needs desperate help! Too bad I’m too busy sewing to deal with it!” — Bridget
“My sewing room closet needs major organizing.” — Beth
Speaking of getting (Continue Reading...)
Taking a class at your local quilt shop
A few weeks ago I took a terrific class from Allie Aller on hand embroidery. The class was at New Pieces in Berkeley…this shop is great! Clean, well-lit, has tons of yummy fabrics and is nicely merchandised (this coming from me—a woman who did retail floor and window merchandising in her youth for 3 years). I always appreciate a store that maximizes its floor and display space.
I have always wanted to learn embroidery and loved the class; in four hours we learned about (Continue Reading...)
My first quilt
Wah hoo! I did it, I finished my first quilt!
About a month ago my 3 1/2 year old started preschool and I was starting to feel a little bit of the empty-nester syndrome. Dramatic? Maybe, especially since I’m at C&T every day of the week, I’m not a stay-at-home mom taking her child somewhere else during the day for the first time. But I was still shaken by the reality of it all and channeled that energy into piecing the (Continue Reading...)
Deborah Kemball wins IQA’s Best of Show!
Woo Hoo! The International Quilt Association just announced that first time C&T author, Deborah Kemball, won Best of Show in the 2011 Celebrate Spring! Judged Show. Here is the award winning quilt:
Deborah is the author of the new book, Beautiful Botanicals.
See all the winners and finalists on display at the debut of International Quilt Festival/Cincinnati, April 8-10, at the Duke Energy Convention Center in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Paperless Paper Piecing?
Confused? Dumbfounded? Don’t worry, I was too. How could the words “paperless” and “paper piecing” appear in the same sentence? Blocks to Diamonds, that’s how. The author, Cheryl Malkowski, was tired of hassling with tiny bits of paper stuck in seams, so she developed a simple technique to avoid the whole mess entirely. I asked her to share a little more about her inspiration for the book:
” Blocks to Diamonds came to be because I couldn’t stand the thought of (Continue Reading...)
