The prizes are arriving and the boxes of 100 Blocks from Today’s Top Designers are here!

Please visit us daily next week for the 100 Blocks Blog Tour. Each day we’ll list the blogs of about 10 designers. Visit the blogs for ideas and inspiration and prizes, prizes, prizes!

We’ll have numerous giveaways here on Quilty Pleasures, too. And at the end of the week, we’ll draw for a Big Bundle Giveaway—a grand prize that will thrill the heart of any quilter!

We are very excited here at Quiltmaker!

Our latest issue, 100 Blocks from Today’s Top Designers, is on its way to newsstands now. Our boxes arrived today.

We have all kinds of fun, interesting things related to this issue planned for next week. We think you’ll enjoy them all! Does any of this sound like fun?

Giveaways!

Ideas!

Inspiration!

Prizes!

Fabric!

Cool quilty blogs!

More giveaways!

Come back to Quilty Pleasures daily from Monday, Nov. 9 to Friday, Nov. 13 to get all the details. We promise you won’t be disappointed!

Several Quilt Markets ago, I had the pleasure of meeting Jacqueline de Jonge, the amazing designer of the Be Colourful patterns. Her foundation-pieced designs are full of rich, vibrant colors. I caught up with her in Houston at Quilt Market and asked her to be a guest blogger for us. She also gave me some of her patterns and a set of note cards to give away on this blog. Leave a comment telling us your favorite color combinations to work with in a quilt, and I’ll randomly draw 5 names on Tuesday, November 10th around noon. Each winner will receive one of Jacqueline’s patterns or the set of note cards.

Quilts are beautiful!

Everyone who is making a quilt finds his or her piece really unique and special! Perhaps it has something to do with the purpose for which the quilt is made or the event where the quilt is received or given as a present. Nevertheless, each quilt is a piece of art where the maker spends a lot of love, enthusiasm and fun in making it!

With that consideration in mind I started to publish my own pattern line under the name Be Colourful. My  patterns are now sold worldwide. It is my goal to inspire quilters all over the world with my colorful patterns. No, it is better to say that it has become my passion and my main importance. It has come from the talent I have received from God. I feel myself rich and blessed by Him that I can do this.

How do I start with a design, where do I get my inspiration from, how do I put all the different fabrics together…every day I receive these kind of questions. Inspiration for a design happens in a single moment during the day. Whether it is in a meeting at work, or a sign on a truck, an advertisement in the newspaper or a magazine, a wheel on a car, a flower…it can be anything. You can see that the shapes I use are traditional and therefore very accessible. But my use of color is maybe not so very common, it is different.

I love to experiment with fabrics and colors and to come up with unique combinations. A design is never steady with me. I can always adjust my drawing as a quarter of the design is always beside me in my studio. Sometimes I have great expectations for a new design along with the colors and fabrics that I planned to use in the design. But once I start to assemble the quilt, it is sometimes not exactly what I expected it to be. Yes this also happens! Because I work on one design at a time, I am able to adjust the pattern at any time. Once the quilt is finished and the pattern descriptions are written, I can leave it and start on another design. 

It often happens that ideas pop up in my head when I am quilting. Then I go to my fabric stash to gather different fabrics and colors. This also inspires me to come up with a new design. And those designs ultimately lead to a new pattern which you can find in your own quilt store in Dutch, English and German.

I have started teaching classes in the US and I really enjoy that! We are now working on a schedule for April 2010, starting in Texas, then to Colorado, Nevada and Ontario. As soon as we have the dates set, we will mention them on our website.

May I invite you to enter my website so that I can inspire you. I really hope that you will enjoy the Be Colourful designs! 

Jacqueline de Jonge
Becolourful!

It didn’t take long for a couple of our readers to make Marilyn Larson’s Any Witch Way quilt from the Sept/Oct ‘09 issue.

Bonnie Campbell’s version was made in less than a week! Her friend Carol McIntosh says that Bonnie is a very prolific member of their Sew Next Time quilt group in Mesquite, NV. Love how the extra outside border ties it all together. Great quilt Bonnie!

Nancy Ottaviano of Yorba Linda, CA made this version. A long running family joke made this the perfect project. Nancy is the “nice Witch of the West”; her sister is the “Witch of the East”. The sisters each have daughters and they have given them the honor of being the North and South Witches. Nancy added angelina fibers to the hair of each witch. Nice job, Nancy!

What have you made from a Quiltmaker pattern? Treat us to
your photos. Click here for details.

It’s a new contest from Quiltmaker and The Electric Quilt Company! You design a quilt in Electric Quilt 6 and use quilting designs from any of the Quilting Designs Volumes 1-7.

Grand Prize: Quiltmaker staff will select the winning design–we will make a quilt from that design and the pattern will appear in an upcoming issue. The winning designer will get to keep the quilt, plus will receive a $200 gift certificate from The Electric Quilt Company. There will also be an EQ Staff Choice and a Viewer’s Choice. Keep reading to find out more.

Great quilting designs can do so much to enhance our quilts. In every issue of Quiltmaker magazine, we give you several new, original motifs. We’ve been collecting these motifs into books for years, and have seven volumes of inspiring motif books.

EQ has been converting our motif books into software and just released volume 7 earlier in October. Read an interview from EQ staffer Andrea Bishop who has recreated each of the 4,425 designs in all seven volumes. Each volume of the software corresponds to a book volume of the same number. The Quilting Designs CDs from Electric Quilt can be used two ways:

1. First, no other software is needed. If you don’t own Electric Quilt 6, you can resize any motif and print it out.
2. Or the Quilting Designs software is compatible with EQ6. You can link the quilting designs to an EQ6 project–where you can combine, modify and resize the designs. Read more about Using Quilting Designs with EQ.

For the Quiltmaker-Electric Quilt Contest, design your quilt in Electric Quilt 6 and incorporate quilting designs from any of the seven volumes of Quilting Designs as described in #2 above. Designs will be judged on originality and the creative interpretation of the quilting designs. Entry forms are due by midnight on December 1, 2009. We can’t wait to see your creations!

Read on for more details, see all the prizes and find the entry form.

You may not be familiar with her name, but you’ve seen Peg’s work on the pages of Quiltmaker for many years. She is one of our home sewers and also designs patterns, most recently the crazy quilt stocking ornaments in Holiday Handiwork in our Nov/Dec ‘09 issue.

Hi, my name is Peg Spradlin.  I’m a home sewer for Quiltmaker and Quilters Newsletter magazines and have been for the past 20 years.  They’re great magazines and I’ve enjoyed every project sent my way—big or small, challenging or easy.

I’m a great believer in learning from other quilters and have sharpened my quilting skills by taking classes from some of the best in the industry—Hari Walner, Diane Gaudynski, and Sue Nickels to name a few.  I also teach classes nationally on all aspects of quilting, including machine quilting, foundation piecing and applique.  A complete list of my classes is available on my website at handicraftsbypeg.com.

Also available, for a limited time on my website, are decorative hooks made from

fine flatware that may be purchased and used to display the miniature crazy quilt

Christmas stocking ornaments (a design of mine) that are patterned in the Nov/Dec ‘09 issue of Quiltmaker.

I’ve also designed a quilt block, Spring Blossom, which is being included in the

new Quiltmaker publication “100 Blocks from Today’s Top Designers”  (on sale 11/17).

Look for my shadow applique calendar holder which will be featured in the Jan/

Feb 2010 issue of Quiltmaker.

More IQA show photos from Houston, along with something I have learned from attending for several years now.

I used to look at the show and be completely blown away by all the talent and skill on exhibit. I’d ask myself, “Why do I even try?”

But eventually I realized those thoughts were self-defeating and demoralizing.

Instead I have learned to be inspired, to greatly appreciate the talent and skill, and to aspire to discover more of my own creative path.

I have learned not to be intimidated by such a show of quilted wonder, but to let it pull me forward into freer thinking, more curiosity and lots of brave exploration. Let the inspiration begin!

This is an amazing quilt. I love its composition.

This quilt inspires me to use some of the gorgeous silk fabrics I’ve bought along the way. The colors in this piece are electric!

More to come!

Thanks to Julie Herman, Jaybird Quilts for a little plug on her blog yesterday. As a result we had many more people leave comments about their favorite method of making triangle-squares. I used random.org to pick a winner, and #15, Mary Ellen is the lucky winner of the new Friendship Triangles book by Edyta Sitar along with the  autographed triangle-squares from the Moda Fabrics designers. I’m going to email her for her address and get her prize on its way.

If you weren’t the winner today, keep checking our blog often. We’ve got many more giveaways planned, including one that Diane just posted today.

Ever since Executive Editor June Dudley mentioned Jan Morin in her last edit letter, readers have been asking us for more information. Seems like a perfect topic for a blog post. Jan lives in Pine Grove, California and has found a way to be green with her quilting scraps and contribute to a worthwhile cause at the same time.

Jan makes pet pillows and donates them to her local SPCA. Here’s how:

Using stash fabric, cut two squares or rectangles of the same size. They can be any size that is roughly appropriate for a pet to lounge on. Place the pieces right sides together and sew around the edges, leaving an opening on one side for turning. Turn the pillow right sides out.

Use your fabric scraps and thread clippings to stuff the pillow.

Jan says the scraps don’t have to be extremely small, just not extremely large. After stuffing, sew the opening closed.

Jan says the pillows are used for dogs and cats, who love them! The SPCA loves them, too, and even gives them to new pet owners for their newly adopted pets.

To find an animal shelter in your area, visit aspca.org. If you’ve read this far, please leave a comment about something you’ve sewn for a good cause and we’ll have a giveaway!

This beautiful bundle holds nine fat quarters of brand new Benartex fabrics in a line called Playful Pups. It’s so new, stores don’t have it yet. We’ll draw for a winner on Friday, Oct. 30 about noon MST.

Another view of the fabrics included:

How cute are these?! Our thanks to Jan for sharing her good cause with QM readers.

Here are a few more photos from the IQA show in Houston recently. The theme of this group is bright colors. There’s a lot of energy here!

Fiesta by Norma Schlager, Danbury, Connecticut.

And a detail of Fiesta, quilted swirls galore:

After the Rain by Sandra Gregg, Cambridge, Massachusetts. The composition of this quilt really appeals to me. Definitely some shibori going on, too.

Tropical Radiance by Rachel Wetzler, St. Charles, Illinois.

And a detail of Tropical Radiance:

I love the details of this next quilt.

It’s called My Stash at 50 (aka Log Cabin with an Attitude) by Karen Eckmeier, Kent, Connecticut. My question is fifty what? Fifty different fabrics? Fifty years old? Stash weighs 50 pounds? Stash consumes 50 yards of space? Or possibly, all of the above?

Detail shots:

And this is All Good Things by Leslie Hall of Longboat Key, Florida:

The subtlety in the light areas of this piece is amazing. Here’s a detail:

That’s it for today. More to come!