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Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Quilt Market, Part II

This is the second installment of news from Spring Quilt Market in Pittsburgh.

Now, here are two women who know how to have fun! You can tell from their smiles. Jane Davila (left) and Elin Waterston are the authors of two art quilt surface design books (Art Quilt Workbook and Art Quilts at Play, from C&T Publishing). I took a workshop from Jane at Market and got to see all the marvelous projects from the latest book up close. This is a terrific book for people who want to learn a ton of techniques (see my review in a previous post).

A few months ago, Elin and I discovered through Facebook that we have some friends in common. Some of my old high school buddies met her in the 80s, and she even knows the guy who played Rolf to my Liesl in my high school production of The Sound of Music! She is also a Pittsburgh native. Small world.

Here is Della Quimby of Della Q in her booth. Della sells beautiful fabrics, including drop-dead silk taffeta, and patterns for handbags and bags to hold knitting needles and yarn. Della also donates a portion of her profits to Vietnam Quilts, a non-profit Vietnam women’s organization, to provide equipment purchases, fabric donations and industry education.


This is Pearl P. Pereira (below), owner of P3 Designs standing in front of her incredibly cute “Baltimore Halloween” quilt. I had been seeing and hearing great things about this design from one of the appliqué Yahoo groups to which I belong, so it was neat to see the actual quilt and meet its designer.

One of the things I like to do at Market is to meet and talk with other designers who make patterns like mine (in this case, block-of-the-month patterns). I try to get a sense of whether I am pricing my patterns correctly, whether I should be laying out and printing them differently, and if my marketing techniques are good. While a few designers refuse to share this information, most of them (including Pearl) were wonderfully helpful. Thanks, Pearl!

This is Lesley Riley, author of the newly released book Fabulous Fabric Art with Lutradur by C&T Publishing. I took Lesley’s 1-1/2 hour class at Market. I had never worked with Lutradur and was eager to test it out. What fun!

Lutrafur is a Pellon fabric designed for roofing and furniture applications that looks like semi-transparent paper. You can paint it, dye it, stamp it, fold it, cut it, burn it, stitch it, run it through an inkjet printer and use it for photo transfer … needless to say it is very versatile, and offers a multitude of possibilities for art quilters, book makers and crafters. We had a lot of fun in Lesley’s class, and when I’m completely done with the project we started in class, I’ll post it on the blog. I also bought Lesley’s book, so you might see some of my work with her techniques showing up here!


I just had to swing by and introduce myself to Karen Kay Buckley (below, at right, with Bonnie McCaffery), because I think I’ve sold about a million people on her product called “Perfect Circles” that has revolutionized the way I applique circles. Bonnie has just created a DVD for Karen called “Applique The Karen Kay Buckley Way.”


I absolutely adore Kaari Meng’s new line for Moda called “French General,” based on her collection of vintage French linens. Oooh la la! They are to die for. She has a wonderful book out, too, (French General Home Sewn) which features these fabrics in delightful projects for every room in the house. This is Kaari modeling a bag made with French General Fabrics that is available through Moda/United Notions:




Linda Teufel (right) is publisher of Dragon Threads, which has books by some top-notch fiber artists. We first met last year at the Spring Quilt Market in Portland, in an airport gift shop! It was great to see her again in the booth of Libas Limited, purveyors of fine fabrics and luscious silks, with Barbara Wing (left). Barbara’s work is featured in the book Silk Unraveled by Lorna Moffat.


And this is Susan Knapp (below). No, really! Susan Knapp and I have been corresponding for a while, once we realized that we had a double in the quilt pattern design world. Susan designs under the name The Quilt Branch in Magnolia, Illinois. She’s part of the reason I use my maiden name, Brubaker, as my middle name. It was fun to finally meet her in person.

Oh, wait! What is that little blue ribbon on my nametag, you ask? Come back for tomorrow’s post to find out! (Yes, this is a blatant tease.)