Mad for Solids 2018…Voting Time!

March 23, 2018March 22, 2018 Elizabeth E.3 Comments

March Madness 2018 FB Header

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Today is the day! I’m over there on the right in Game 6, paired with the ever-lovely Rene.

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The name of my Painter’s Palette Solids bundle is Northern Lights. Because why? Because I’ve always wanted to see the Northern Lights, and because we watched a movie about surfing in Iceland, and well, because:

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So, if you like the colors of the heavens in the photo above, and feel like you want to vote to send me to the next bracket, head here:

• Paintbrush Studios Blog
• Paintbrush Studios on Instagram
• Paintbrush Studios on Facebook

Voting begins at 6 p.m. CDT [Central Daylight Time, or UTC -5] on March 23rd (today) and goes through to tomorrow at 6 p.m. CDT. I’ve timed this post to hit a bit early in the day, so please wait until the Paintbrush Studio posts go live to place your vote.

March Madness 2018 FB Header

You Can Be A Winner

More information on how you can be a winner is on found on a previous post. So here’s my story about this fabric and why you’re going to want some. I was at Guild on Tuesday night. In Show and Share, I showed my Improv Appliqué quilt that I’d demo-ed at QuiltCon. My seat mate, Angie, commented that the borders “were like black velvet,” so rich and saturated was the color. And that’s how everyone reacts when seeing these fabrics.

I participate in these little contests for one reason only: I love these solids and want them to be everywhere, on everyone’s stash and retail shelves. Come and join us in using Painter’s Palette Solids!

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I’ve been playing around in QuiltPro and making blocks with these colors. If I head to the next bracket, I’ll have a mini quilt to show. So, thanks!

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Giveaway

March Madness 2018

March 18, 2018March 18, 2018 Elizabeth E.4 Comments

March Madness 2018 FB Header MM Bracket 2018-round 1.jpg

For the last couple of years, the fine people at Paintbrush Studios have hosted a Mad for Solids Competition, where quilters create a stack of colors, give them a name & describe their inspiration, and they go up against each other. (Why should basketball fans have all the fun? Quilters need some play time, too!)

Above is the bracket where many beautiful colors of Painter’s Palette Solid fabrics will vie to reach the championship match-up. The first “game” is already up online, and it features two different stacks of fabrics (seen below). I hope you’ll take time to vote for your favorite each day.

Here are the links:

• Paintbrush Studios Blog: Introductory Post, where you can see all the 16 bundles and read about each quilter and their inspiration
• Paintbrush Studios on Instagram
• Paintbrush Studios on Facebook

You Can Be A Winner

You can also win free fabric by voting. They will randomly select four voters from the championship game to win fat quarter bundles of the winning palette. To make sure your favorite bundle is the winner, vote for the one you like best to get it to the championship game.

My game day is this Friday, March 23rd.

Please sure to check back here for info on how you can vote for me, and to see why I chose the grouping that I did.

But for today, head over to Paintbrush Studios to start your voting with two beautiful different stacks. You’ll only have one day to get your vote in, a 24-hour period from 6 p.m. on the day announced, when a new round will take its place.

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Have fun!!

Escape to Texas • March 2018

March 16, 2018 Elizabeth E.9 Comments

TexasMarch_0

We escaped to Texas last week, to visit our son and his family, as well as head to San Antonio, where my husband participated in a scientific conference. TexasMarch_1

Pico Iyer, a well-respected travel writer noted that “The urgency of slowing down — to find the time and space to think — is nothing new, of course, and wiser souls have always reminded us that the more attention we pay to the moment, the less time and energy we have to place it in some larger context. “Distraction is the only thing that consoles us for our miseries,” the French philosopher Blaise Pascal wrote in the 17th century, “and yet it is itself the greatest of our miseries.” He also famously remarked that all of man’s problems come from his inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” TexasMarch_2

So I tried to grab some undistracted time with my grandsons; Alex and I made a Lego sewing machine.

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“When things come at you very fast, naturally you lose touch with yourself,” noted Marshall McLuhan, over a half-century ago.

It was nice to get away.

200 Quilts · Quilts · Textiles & Fabric

Triple Squares in “On Your Mark”

March 12, 2018March 10, 2018 Elizabeth E.8 Comments

OnYourMark1_Simone

My friend Simone recently launched her first line of fabric for Paintbrush Studios. It’s called On Your Mark and has its origins in punctuation marks.

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Because I’m a pal, I get to sew with it. I made her a baby quilt using her fabrics, perfect because the fabric has a lovely soft hand that the quilt won’t be scratchy at all. I call this Triple Square.

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It’s basically a variation of a nine-patch, using 2-1/2″ squares with side pieces of 2-1/2″ by 6-1/2.” It goes together very quickly (like I started it Saturday afternoon, and delivered it, unbound, by Monday evening). You may have seen this at QuiltCon, where she used it in her demo.

Triple Squares_2b

It finishes at 42″ square. I quilted it in random angle lines, going around and over and above the brightly colored squares. I threw in some random other background pieces, just to spice it up. Then I channel quilted it around the outside edges, to create a type of border.