Now that the weather has finally turned and we have warmer, sunnier days ahead, I can't wait to bring out the portable tables and dye equipment to my driveway to screen and paint yards and yards of fabric.

One of the perks of living in Colorado is having ready access to the amazing number of highly talented fiber artists that live and create in the Front Range area.

In Boulder alone, there are so many textile and mixed-media fiber artists that when I attended the annual open studios tour last fall, I couldn't even get to them all.

When someone asks me what's the difference between contemporary art quilts and traditional quilts, one of the first things I think of is embellishment, especially beads and encrustation.

I almost fell off my chair laughing when I saw this fiber art postcard from U.K. artist Priscilla O'Rourke. It seems no sooner had she received her copy of the February/March issue of Quilting Arts Magazine than she turned a photo of the staff she found on the Editor's note page into quilted imagery. 

Last week while back in Massachusetts I picked up a few essential Christmas mementos to send to our new Colorado home. As I was packing them up at Quilting Arts headquarters, people gathered around to comment.

If you opened up your GPS or Google maps and did a search for the intersection of traditional and modern quilting, I bet the pin would drop right on top of Malka Dubrawsky. Malka has an amazing eye for taking basic patchwork quilt blocks and giving them a fresh and contemporary spin using color and freehand cutting and piecing.

One of the hardest things for me at quilt shows is observing the no-touch rule. As much as I completely understand it, I often silently thank the quilt guardians for keeping me on my best behavior. It's so hard to resist all those touchable textiles!

I first became aware of Elin Waterston through the Quilting Arts reader challenges, particularly our annual calendar contests. Very quickly, our team came to recognize Elin's distinctive brand of well-thought-out, uncluttered design featuring a strong focal point.