Thanks for watching the Color for Quilters video. If you enjoyed it, please sign up below for my monthly newsletter that contains color tips, quilt designs, and a recipe. I promise not to use your email for any other purpose: I don’t like SPAM either.  As a thank you, I’ll send you 10 Color Tips for Quilters and a gift of a color wheel chart so you can get started with your own fabrics today!

Color Mastery Table Runners offers:

• 12 table runner patterns, each 16×40″, featuring a different color each month
• 10 short instructional videos where Maria shows you time-saving and accurate piecing and quilting techniques
• 10 presentations offering professional quilt designers tips on each month’s color and how they used them in their own projects
• table runner projects are great for mini-lessons and no UFOs
• the most beautifully decorated table in your neighborhood!
• great opportunity for group projects, bee groups, and quilt guilds. Enjoy a color challenge with different results each month

Click here to learn more about the table runner series:

I Want to Master Color

What a big finish to 2010 we had with the Quilter’s Favorite Things giveaway! We had so much fun with that contest and we had five lucky winners. This Monday, Jan. 10, I’ll be Pat Sloan’s guest on her Creative Talk Radio show. You won’t want to miss this interview, because I’ll be revealing a quilting industry first on her show, and her listeners will get the exclusive scoop.  Join the party to hear us chat about color, Pantone’s color for 2011, and of course there will be prizes! So tune in and don’t miss the fun. To listen in, visit her show’s website and click the listen live button. The show runs from 4:00 to 5:00, and I’ll be on the second half starting at 4:30.

To add even more to the fun, I’ll be posting live on Facebook during the show.  I’ll be asking questions and giving away prizes during the show, so listen in and answer the questions I post from the show to have even more chances to win!

Here’s to a colorful and creative 2011!

Every Thanksgiving I long for a way to permanently record our blessings.  As often as I teach my children the lesson of gratitude and try to practice it myself, the daily carpool, school, work, dinner, and errands tend to take over, and we forget.  Here is a simple way to remember, record, and reflect.

The tree starts out bare, just branches, trunk, and buttons.  During our Thanksgiving day with extended family, we’ll catch up with stories of loved ones lost, children who’ve sprouted so tall you barely recognize them, and hugs and kisses all around.  As we cook, catch up, and enjoy time with those we love so much, we’ll begin adding leaves to the tree.

We’ll each write down on a leaf, with a gold metallic marker, what we’re grateful for this sign, sign and date it.  As more and more family members add their blessings, the leaves begin to accumulate.

Then, before we all sit down to the meal, everyone will add their gratitude leaf to the tree, until it’s overflowing with blessings.

Enjoy your loved ones this Thanksgiving holiday.  Cherish the time together, and continue to remember how richly you’ve been blessed with November’s Blessing Tree pattern.

Here’s a hint for next month:  count the branches on the tree.  Hhhmm, would be great for December, too, wouldn’t it?  Stay tuned and I’ll show you how to turn the Blessings Tree into an Advent Tree for Christmas.

To order the Color Mastery Table Runners enhanced e-pattern. click here: I Want to Master Color

You will too after you experience the luscious blue-green quilts offered up this month by indie quilt designers from the Yahoo Quilt Designers Collective.  Get advice from and see the quilts of Pat Sloan, Barbara Campbell, Sarah Whitney, Helen Stubbings, Marilyn Foreman, and Marcy Horswill. To view the show in Full Screen mode or to embed this slideshow in your blog, just click the Menu link.

August’s featured color is blue-green, the hottest color of 2010.  Petite Pineapples combines tradition with trend, juxtaposing 19th century-style hand applique with trendy blue-greens of 2010.  This sweet runner uses a clean color palette of teal, aqua, brown, and cream, and bids a fond farewell to summer.  Not a hand-applique fan?  Happy for you, this project is machine-applique friendly.

Petite Pineapples also shows you how easy it is to get a completely different look by changing just one color.  This runner uses exactly the same fabrics as July’s Christmas Cabin, only I’ve exchanged teal for red.  By making one small change, I completely transformed this color scheme, and you can too.  I show you how.

The dogtooth border is a classic hand-applique treatment, and I show you an easy way to cut and applique it, getting perfectly sharp points without any worries.  Subscribers to the pattern series get exclusive access to a video on how make this border, so you can follow along with me.   The freemotion wavy echo quilting design is simple to execute but impressive in the final runner, and I outline exactly how to do it.

Petite Pineapples Pattern Update:  $5.95 (delivered early and automatically to pattern series subscribers – keep reading!)  Add to Cart

If you can’t get to the quilt shop to select your own fabrics, no worries.  I’m offering a Petite Pineapples kit as well.  It’s best to choose your own fabrics for your color palettes, but we all have those times when life gets too busy and we just can’t get to it.  I’d rather you be able to do the lesson with a kit than not at all.

Petite Pineapples Kit: $21.95 Add to Cart

Learn by Doing

In addition to learning how to applique the Petite Pineapples block and coordinate a fresh color palette, you’ll also discover how to:

• cut and place applique motifs improvisationally, 19th century-style
• make the applique process effortless with my Applique Checklist
• make an impressive dogtooth border with my step-by-step instructions and video
• quilt a freemotion wavy echo design for stunning results

So not only do you get a sophisticated and new original design, you update your skills as well.

Learn New Techniques

Improvisational cutting and placement are new to many quilters who rely on 21-century techniques that focus on precision, precision, precision.  This approach allows you the freedom and flexibility to give each block it’s own unique charm and eccentricities.

If you’ve only relied on freezer paper or fabric glue, let me introduce you to the world of needle turn applique by eye.  It’s a wonderfully relaxing technique that gives each applique motif an exceptional look while harmonizing with the project as a whole.

If you’ve been intimidated by dogtooth borders in the past, or always wanted to try one, this is your chance.  I give you a no-fail technique that details the process, step-by-step.

To order the Color Mastery Table Runners enhanced e-pattern. click here: I Want to Master Color