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: Inspiration
My studio garden
Today I’ll be a guest on the Creative Mojo radio show at 12:00 pm PT (3:00 pm ET) – I hope you’ll tune in and join us in the live chat room! Click here at showtime.
So on to a little story about my studio, which sits at the back of my yard. In another life it was a garage, with an upstairs that was once an apartment. In a 10 year stint of constipated gardening (this is my first house, (Continue Reading...)
French Braid Trifecta
We recently interviewed our author, Jane Hardy Miller, to learn more about the story behind her fabulous French Braid quilts that have been featured in her three bestselling books—French Braid Quilts (with Arlene Netten), French Braid Obsession, and French Braid Transformation.
How did French Braids come to be your specialty, and what is it that you love about them the most?
I sort of started with the French Braids by accident. I had been quilting for over 30 years and I just (Continue Reading...)
Historical fabric from Andover
It has been about a month since Fall Quilt Market and I am still getting caught up…but I wanted to share with you this historical fabric line that Andover introduced at Market called Winterthur, inspired by textiles that John Hewson originally created in the late 1760’s which are featured in the Winterthur Museum.
Hewson created Baltimore-type designs; he printed cover lids (bed spreads), handkerchiefs, and other fine linens. He was referred to as a Bromley Hall fabric printer, which meant (Continue Reading...)
Am I qualified to quilt?
Looking around my house recently, I realized that I’m definitely “qualified” to work as an editor for C&T Publishing. You probably didn’t know it, but I have several PhDs. (Uh, huh.) Just browse through this post and you’ll see some of them . . . Projects half Done.
Above is the oldest of my UFOs (UnFinished Objects)…a cross-stitch alphabet sampler I started when my first daughter was a baby. She’s 23 now and the project has a permanent shrine (Continue Reading...)
The story of the stamp
The saga of my signature stamp quilt patterns started with a guild challenge in September 2005. We were all given a fat-eighth of bright, patterned fabric that looked very much like the Rubik’s Cube toy…you can see it in the center of the quilt.
Since I am a representational artist, I tend to gravitate to realistic imagery…so what did that fabric look like to me other than a puzzle cube? Maybe a telephone keypad or a graph or a structure? I (Continue Reading...)
Thanks for the inspiration, #14
I had considered taking a beading class for quite some time. I have tons of jewelry and thought making some of my own would be a great solution for all those random pieces in my jewelry box that don’t quite work with anything else. So when our publisher, Amy Marson, thumped her impressive beading case down on my desk and said I could use anything I wanted, I pulled the trigger and signed up for a beginning stringing class at Just (Continue Reading...)
Evolution of a quilt
In 2006, my sister Paula (who lives in Colorado and knows what a Francophile I am) made a beautiful over-sized lap quilt for me. Well, she made the top. I have a Nolting longarm machine, so she makes finished quilts for everyone else in the family, but she send me TOPS which I then have to finish myself! I’m NOT complaining though. Paula had used a variety of star patterns, in sizes that were multiples of 3″ and (Continue Reading...)
A taste of free-form quilting
Rayna Gillman’s new book, Create Your Own Free-Form Quilts, inspired me to dig out some old quilt squares and bring new life to them. In her book, Rayna wrote a chapter that shows how to reinvent an old project (aka “a dog”) with strips and bits. I remembered some squares I acquired in the giveaway box here at C&T. This box sits in our lunchroom where anyone can purge or extract items. On any given day you might (Continue Reading...)
Fall Quilt Market—textures, colors, and quilts
The end of October is one of the times I look forward to every year. A bunch of us from C&T go to the International Fall Quilt Market in Houston, Texas. The booths are colorful, informative, and innovative…and the exhibits are breathtaking and inspiring. The colors and textures were what drew me in and that is what I want to share with you today. There were buttons, and rick rack, paper flowers and felt balls. I loved the rough texture of (Continue Reading...)
Team Quilting 911
As a production editor here at C&T, I get to be part of the team that produces dozens of book titles a year, full of the most beautiful quilts and crafts I’ve ever seen! Several fabulous book team members—creative, accomplished quiltmakers themselves—gave of their talents this year in an unexpected team quilting project.
My first quilt was planned years ago: a free-form T-shirt quilt for my daughter Colleen’s high school graduation. I purchased fabric for the quilt top in (Continue Reading...)
