Notes of an Urban Amish

She's a computer researcher and a fabulous art quilter. She dived into it I'm told. She likes whipped cream. She and I are UrbanAmish development team. If the cake had been near me I would have joined her in the dive. She's into c o l o r. Our breakfast conversation do tend to run into the esoteric areas of color and pattern and quilting design and fiber content but that usually but not always concerns my latest cereal. We are happy this way. Currently we are transforming our little truck-delivered Sears Cape Cod into a personal size quilt and print museum that we get to sleep and eat and watch movies on AppleTV in.

We just got delivery of new hooks for the picture molding we had put in our living room and dining room so we can change the exhibition as much as we want without making holes all over the walls. And we actually transformed our home into a temporary Rubik's Cube by having the floors refinished to "museum" blond.

She is currently exploring green—it's yellower side in great detail—but more about it in a later post. Here are some of my favorite of her color explorations: This is the exploration of the bluer side of green in the quilt formerly known as Before Night Falls but now called Forest, Ivy, Emerald, Viridian. The brighter side of the spectrum explored brilliantly in Sunlight, Citron, Saffron, Ochre.

Soon to be in a book: And the introspective purples in Lavender, Heliotrope, Heliotrope, Iris. Or as I call it, being a Prince fan: And Pamela just hung up my gift quilt in my studio: Delphine in an English Garden , a bigger-than-life portrait of my favorite stuffed animal standing in the focus fabric field of one of the fabric lines I have most enjoyed designing, In an English Garden. The picture also gives you an idea of what the cyber half of my design studio looks like.

By the way, that's the free download quilt for my soon-to- be-released fabric line from Blank, Twinkle, on the screen of my beloved Mac. Having this quilt right before me increases my happiness quotient exponentially. It's like having a door into a magic realm unexpectedly installed in your room. Deborah Vollbracht Creative Folk Quilting. Deborah found me through the Blank Quilting website.

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She politely asked if she could use some of my fabrics for a project she had in mind. When I started seeing her designs I was very taken with her style. I liked the simple elegance of her ideas. They were spare to a perfectly balanced point—no more and no less than was needed to make a visual statement.

About Robert Sarwark

She also impressed me that in about 6 months she willingly underwent a crash course in computer literacy while temporarily away from home and engaged in helping her sister out in a difficult time. Total grace under pressure. I carry her pattern designs on my website for now until she can make her transition fully back to her beloved Colorado where she finally was able to return and take the next steps to getting herself a website.

For now we must make do with her blog to read her in her own voice and see snippets of her fabric play. Do visit it and you will see what I mean. Link from her web name above. I predict once things settle down for her she will be a creative force in the design world and I will be able to say I knew her when. I have to thank Deborah for one of the most emotionally meaningful pieces of fabric art I now own.

Below is the Fab Frame that she made for me with a picture of my parents on their honeymoon in as a thank you for helping her out with the pattern for it. My mother died this summer; my father died in It hangs in my studio where I see them everyday. I also have to thank her for this great placemat set that graced my porch this summer. My porch set is in Garden Party fabrics. My friend Marta's set is in Dream Garden fabrics and that's her lovely kitchen dining area.

Marta lives in another great old Sears home near me. All of Deborah's patterns mentioned above are available through my website along with fabric kits if desired. Barbara Campbell Love in Stitches. Barbara and I met through our local Garden State Quilters guild. For two years we collaborated as a design team under the umbrella name of Love in Stitches.

She sewed and designed quilts and I designed fabrics and virtual quilts. Together we co-authored two books: We traveled to quilt market together and back home we had a lot of fun brainstorming and bouncing ideas off each other. However we came to the sad realization that despite all the fun we were having our business model was not financially viable and that our design and work styles were fundamentally at odds. Independence with the occassional collaboration was the only way to go for each of us. Today Barbara designs for many fabric manufacturers and continues publishing many beautiful quilts in the trade magazines.

Barbara continues to be the source of many beautiful quilt designs using my fabrics even now and is concentrating on developing her wonderful ideas and getting them out to the world.

Here's one of her latest soon to be published with Quilter's Newsletter. It's a very clever rethinking of an old favorite, the basket quilt. Rethinking the everyday in quilting is something Barbara is very good at. She's always trying to figure out a way to do things faster. She just doesn't like to do the same thing in the same way twice.

Here's a close-up detail. Notice the fabric folding. And here's one that she did with my Sketchbook line featured this fall in Fabric Trends. Mario Picayo Editorial Campana. Mario is the editor-in-chief of Editorial Campana and it's juvenile division, Campanita. I design the books for Editorial Campana. Editorial Campana publishes literature written in English and Spanish by Latin s who dare to challenge the literary canon, conventional social thinking, and who believe in culture as patrimony for everyone. Campana publishes works that contribute to the recovery of Latin s personal and historic memory as well as those that will develop the pleasure of reading literature written by Latin s.

Readers will see some of my Dream Garden fabrics being used as home decor in Ms. The book, published in September is now in it's second printing. Here's two of my favorite scenes. The first is one of the first scenes in the book when you know things are going to go bad. This second scene is when things are almost past the point of no return it's all still careening downhill —for the humans in the household— Kitty seems to be enjoying herself just fine.

Despite the informality of her dress, Marta looks really impressive on paper and is more so in everyday life. Established between , the Amish communities of central Illinois are concentrated in Moultrie and Douglas counties, about miles south and west of Champaign-Urbana Nolt: This predominantly Old Order Amish settlement of around 4, can be found along Route between the towns of Arthur and Arcola. Congregations of more modernized Mennonites are also located nearby, as well as interspersed among them.

I visited this area by bicycle recently and took a few snapshots I avoided any close-up shots of Amish people, as they strongly prefer not to be photographed — according to their beliefs it promotes vanity:.

Billboard at the entrance to Amish country between Arcola and Arthur, Illinois. On the outskirts of Arthur, IL, horses and buggies coexist with automobiles. Founded in in Sugarcreek, Ohio, the Budget provides weekly, highly localized news to the Amish and Mennonite communities throughout North America and the world. What I found while riding my modern bicycle alongside horses and buggies constructed according to centuries-old methods was a place where the past and the present intersect in notably profound ways.

According to Steven M. Nolt, a recognized expert on Mennonite and Amish history,. A History of the Amish. I saw the back—and flipped out! Then I convinced him to lend it to me for the shop—and he did!!!! Now you might think—random strip piecing—easy enough, right? Well, in this case—no! I decided to create a more beginner friendly version—something a little more right brain oriented—random—fluid—and super easy!

The traditional solid colors used by these women reflected the Amish culture of frugality and modesty. In fact Amish women were discouraged from indulging in the worldly practice of piecing small pieces of colorful print fabric together because it was considered too decorative. Instead they did what many other quilters before them did—they worked with what they had on hand—piecing scraps of the dark wool fabrics left over from their own garment sewing.