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: Staff Pick
Crazy for Judith’s iPhone App
Over a year ago we started creating iPhone apps. We experienced a huge learning curve with the first one, and the curve was even steeper with the second one. The first app was pretty straight-forward though; we converted the Quick & Easy Block Tool. The second was creating three full-feature apps at a great price, all presented within a free intro package, with loads of how-to video clips, step-by-step illustrations of over 15o stitches and stitch combinations, instructions for both (Continue Reading...)
I Love the Carol Doak Keepsake Frame Cards
I love, love, love the new Carol Doak Keepsake Frame Cards, I’ve been waiting impatiently for them ever since I heard that we were going to be publishing them.
I really enjoy making my own cards–these make it so easy, and they look so great. The hand-made paper they are made from feels substantial and deluxe. You can stitch through them, and drawn on them. When I get a chance, I’m going to play with painting the whole card. You’ve got to (Continue Reading...)
Staff Pick: Crazy with Cotton by Diana Leone
What on earth do you do with a collection of Hawaiian shirts? My small quilting group had promised a young man we had known for years to make a quilt using his beloved Hawaiian shirts. He had lost a lot of weight, but he couldn’t bear to part with the shirts that were now way too big for him.
Like most non-quilters, he thought that his quilting friends could easily make a quilt from the shirts. In his mind all quilters (Continue Reading...)
Jan Krentz in Town
Jan Krentz was in town at the end of August to teach from her wonderful new book Quick Diamond Quilts & Beyond. I wasn’t able to take the class (sponsored by my guild), but I did stop by on the first day to say Hi and to take some pictures to share.
Jan’s book walks you through all the steps to create an amazing variety of quilts made from diamond shapes (with no inset seams!). Everyone in class was having a (Continue Reading...)
Staff Pick: Jane Dávila’s Surface Design Essentials
There was a point in my life when I never thought I would be comfortable with the words “surface design.” For some reason the term carried a scary, intimidating and unachievable connotation to me. Turns out, I was being pretty silly. Surface design is totally achievable, easy, forgiving, but most of all FUN! What turned my opinion around? Jane Dávila’s Surface Design Essentials.
In preparing for the launch of the Liquitex® Surface Design Center, we had several staff training sessions where (Continue Reading...)
Kick Summer Off with Inspired! Creativity Cards
Now that June is in full swing, we are finding ourselves surrounded by sunshine, flowers, and inspiration. As C&T author Wendy Hill says, “You’ll find colors and textures all around you, from the garden outside to the cooking scraps in the kitchen sink.” Just by looking at the picture on the front of Hill’s card showing her quilt “Anything Goes” made up of brilliant colors, mixed fabric, and circles and squares, I can tell she really looks everywhere.
If you’re like (Continue Reading...)
Staff Pick: Super Simple Quilts #2 with Alex Anderson & Liz Aneloski
When my friend, Loralee Windsor, was helping me out while I was recuperating from an easy foot surgery a short while ago, she spent some time at my bookshelf and then made off with one of my Super Simple Quilts series books. She brought it back the following weekend, having made three lap- or wall-size quilts—one of each of the three designs featured in Super Simple Quilts #2 with Alex Anderson & Liz Aneloski!
She rated “So Woven” as the easiest (Continue Reading...)
Staff Pick: Harriet Hargrave’s Quilter’s Graph Paper
You know what they say: Necessity is the mother of invention.* It’s true!
While working on the second book in Harriet and Carrie Hargrave‘s Quilter’s Academy series (Quilter’s Academy Vol.2–Sophomore Year), Harriet and I were brainstorming how to make the content fit into the planned 96 pages. (The authors have so much to share and are rightfully unwilling to compromise on content by cutting any necessary information, which is why the book is now 112 pages. I’m not that good an (Continue Reading...)
A Variation on a Cozy Modern Quilt
I’ve had so many of the shop owners I work with—I like to call them “my” shop owners—get Cozy Modern Quilts in their stores, then rave about it, and use it for classes, that I decided to try it myself.
I adapted the Mint Chocolate Wall Quilt project in the book (pictured below) to a runner size of about 15” x 51”, including 1 1/2” borders, by doing a 2 block x 6 block setting.
I never worry too much about yardage (Continue Reading...)
Sneak Peek: Collage+Cloth=Quilt by Judi Warren Blaydon
I just looked through the preview pages of one of our upcoming Fall 2010 titles, Collage+Cloth=Quilt, by Judi Warren Blaydon, and it is amazing! The imagery is, in a word, rich. The concept behind the book is that artists can use collages of their own photos as inspiration for stunning, abstract quilts.
It is so fascinating to see how Judi finds just the right fabric to make things work and the quilt results are really interesting. I give Judi and her (Continue Reading...)
