What are your favorite color combinations for quilt art and surface design? I particularly love the combination of hot pink with orange and turquoise. Or red, yellow, and orange together. And then there are the sun-washed combinations of yellow, blue, and green.

I've always found quilters to be a generous bunch, always ready to share a technique or some fabric from their stash.

I'm an equal-opportunity fabric monger: I drool just as much over hand surface-designed fabrics. I gobble up every new technique and have even tried some fabric stamping, ice dyeing, resist dyeing, and fabric painting. I love it.

Usually when we hear the word shibori, we think of dyeing. Shibori dyeing come from the Japanese term for several methods of resist dyeing using binding or tying, stitching, folding, twisting, compressing it, or capping to create patterns.

When I returned to New England from QuiltCon in Austin, Texas, this week, I couldn't help but notice: it snowed again while I was gone. Yes, while I was in the climate-controlled comfort of the exhibit halls surrounded by colorful quilts--and quilters--Mother Nature had thrown another heavy blanket of snow over my region.

Last week I shared a pillow project by Candy Glendening, noting how the simplicity of the design allowed her hand-dyed fabrics to take center stage. Today I thought give you some insight into Candy's fabric dyeing process.

Whether or not you are celebrating Christmas, I hope you will think about setting aside some time—today or in the New Year—to think about one special gift: your ability to create art quilts and other fiber art. Is 2013 the year you will to bring your quilt art to a wider audience?

Art quilting can be an expensive hobby. A good-quality sewing machine, specialty threads, and stacks and stacks of fat quarters, are just the beginning. It always seems like there's some new gadget, tool, or surface-design supply I absolutely must have.