Thursday, July 16, 2009

VS Ramachandran on your mind

Kim McLean's Flower Basket Medallion Quilt

Kim McLean's Lollypop Trees



Kim is an award winning quiltmaker from Australia who features imaginative use of Kaffe's fabrics in her quilts.

Monday, July 13, 2009

Quilting for Peace


















About the book:
As crafters of all ages take to their sewing machines in unprecedented numbers, many of them join a movement to distribute hope and warmth to those in need through quilting. These are volunteers who have inherited a tradition of comfort and protest, and a belief that they can make the world a better place one stitich at a time.
Quilting for Peace, the follow-up to STC’s Knitting for Peace, profiles these quilters in more than 25 essays about individuals and organizations devoted to making quilts and other necessities for the needy. The efforts range from Newborns in Need, a group that makes clothing for premature babies at nearby hospitals; to Quilts of Valor, which makes quilts to honor wounded soldiers; to the Sleeping Bag Project, which distributes 100,000 homemade sleeping bags to the homeless every year. This timely book also includes 15 projects and guidelines for quilters who want to contribute to an existing effort or establish a new one.

About the author:
Katherine Bell is a writer, editor, and quilter. Her fiction has appeared in Best American Short Stories 2006, and she works as an online managing editor for Harvard Business Publishing. She lives in Somerville, Massachusetts.

Authors: By Katherine Bell; photographs by Thayer Allyson Gowdy
Imprint: STC Craft
ISBN: 1-58479-804-1
EAN: 9781584798040
Availability: Prepublication
Publishing Date: 10/1/2009
Trim Size: 8 1/4 x 7 3/4
Pages Count: 136
Cover: Hardcover
Illustrations: 20 color photographs

article link: http://www.abramsbooks.com/Books/Quilting_for_Peace-9781584798040.html

Saturday, July 11, 2009

Water


"Water is a paradox. Though resistant to pressure, it can change its state dramatically, forming steam or ice. As Lao Tse so eloquently shows in the Tao Te Ching, water always seeks the lowest level, and enters the most despised places, yet gives life to the Ten Thousand Things. Through yielding, water can wear down a stone or find a way in where tools could not."

~The Secret Language of Birthdays
by Gary Goldshneider & Joose Elffers

Thursday, July 9, 2009

Pink Chocolate














The origin of chocolate brown used as a predominant color in printed fabric appeared with regularity in the nineteenth century. The color was worn by widows who had passed out of the stage of mourning, when they were expected to wear only black. The patterns used in these "mourning browns" were simple calicos, and not like the more stylized designs featured in this collection.

Later in the century brown as a color in printed fabric started moving to the forefront of European fashion. The idea is perhaps copied from hard to find Indian hand painted cottons. In the early to mid 1800's these Indian fabrics using rich colors painted on top of dark grounds were rarely seen in Europe. However, as a result of these beautiful imported fabrics, it is then that we began to see brown combined with the lively colors of red and pink emerging as a trend in Europe.

This Pink Chocolate Collection commemorates several of these stunning
European designs c. 1875.

http://www.merchantcircle.com/blogs/Thistle.Bee.Quilt.Shoppe.919-778-2277/2009/5/New-Fabrics-Have-Arrived-/231589



Windham pattern: http://www.baumtextile.com/projects/pdf/chocolate_baskets.pdf