Each time we gear up for another International Quilt Festival Make It University! TM with Cloth Paper Scissors® event, we try to balance keeping popular components with adding new features. As our staff brainstormed ideas for IQF/Chicago April 16-18, one thing we made sure to include was an art trade-but with a twist....

Makers of custom quilts and people who want to learn how to make a quilt, here is an invaluable resource on free-motion stitching: Free-Motion Machine Quilting - How to Make a Quilt: 67 Machine Stitching Tips and Motifs ....

It seems that by the time we actually put up our new calendars in January, they're already filled with quilt show dates, deadlines, goals, and to-do lists. In fact, it's not unusual for each person on our staff to have three Quilting Arts calendars open on the wall at a time, each turned to successive months, giving us a 90-day look at what's coming up. (As an added benefit, we get to look at three fabulous art quilts at once!)...

When I post pictures on Facebook of the team wearing sparkling leprechaun bowlers or upload a YouTube video of us getting our jingle on, you probably think it's just all fun and games here at Quilting Arts ....

What do you get when you challenge a bunch of mixed-media and fiber artists to create their own 9" x 9" fabric swatches to be swapped? You get nearly 200 pieces of amazingly creative fabric and a whole lot of very happy artists. That's just what happened when Quilting Arts' sister publication, Cloth Paper Scissors , held a fabric swap challenge earlier this year. The results are in the July/August issue, and I was so blown away by the textile artistry, I asked Editor Jenn Mason...

Someone recently asked me who inspires me, and it didn't take me long to answer: Kerr Grabowski. Why? Because she is so inventive with her surface design techniques and so open to the possibilities....

If I had to create a basic lesson plan for how to make a quilt it would be broken down into these three basic steps:...

What would we do without fusible web? It holds our quilt sandwiches together while we sew, makes appliqu é a breeze, and can even hem a skirt in an emergency....