Sunrise Quilt Studio

I have been wanting to update - or should I say "finish" my quilting studio. Currently, I am located in our walk-out basement. Aside from our master bedroom it is the only room in the house large enough to accomodate my 14 foot longarm machine table. The problem is that the room is unfinished. The outside walls are the framing and insulation. The ceiling isn't finished, and I don't have enough storage for quilting/sewing supplies or even a sewing machine cabinet. The floors are concrete which I can live with since I have the anti-fatigue floor mats down on both sides of the quilting machine and now in front of the drafting table that I use as a cutting surface. First things first - I need to get the walls and ceiling finished. Hopefully they will be done this fall somewhere around the kitchen/dining room remodel that we have planned. That in itself will make the space brighter and cheerier. The floor I can live with the way it is for an extended period of time since...

This quilt is called "Floral Garden I". It is hand painted using acrylic craft paints mixed with textile medium and machine quilted. I made this quilt for a class sample. The technique requires some experience so it isn't for beginners but it is fun. I have only taught this class only once. The class was listed for quilters with experience in decorative painting, but the students who signed up for the class had absolutely no experience. We spent the entire 4 hour class on the painting stroke techniques. I decided this quilt needed to be taught in 4-6 phases in order to teach the painting techniques first, then go on to the quilting, but the classes never came to be. Joe's quilts are on their way home to him, but I forgot to get photos of them before packing them up-ugh! Later this week I'll start on another customer quilt. Hopefully I'll remember to take photos before sending the quilt back to it's owner. This weekend was spent on helping my siblings cle...

Our life made a change last Thursday that was unexpected - not terrible, but a change none the less that has created some busyness for me. My oldest daughter is now homeschooling. We pulled her out of public school very suddenly for reasons I won't go into, but I've spent the past week testing her level of work and gathering curriculum for her. She's a fast learner in 7th grade. I already have 7th through 10th grade curriculum at home from my son's homeschool years, but Hannah is testing beyond 7th grade in math and language arts so far. In science and social studies we are looking for topics that will keep her interest. The textbooks are general covering broad subjects but just scratching the surface. So 7th grade Life Science and World Studies seems shallow to her. She likes to dig deep into these subjects. We've started a list of topics to study this year: Pompei, Japanese culture, the Dust Bowl period, hurricanes, etc. In language arts, we skipped to the back of...

My youngest daughter, Sarah, has been raising Painted Lady Butterflies these past 2 weeks as part of her science unit this month. All 5 caterpillars survived and turned into butterflies! The emerged from their chrysalis' over the weekend but it was too cool outside to release them. So we fed them sugar water sprinkled on sedum flowers. Yesterday it finally warmed up enough to release them and I took photos of 2 of them as they sunned themselves on the edge of the butterfly home before taking flight. This was such a fun project that we have decided to try it again in the spring. On a quilty note - last night I finally attended our local quilt guild meeting. I have had such a hard time finding out where this guild meets (they recently changed their meeting location) as well as getting the evening free on meeting night, but it finally all came together last night. This is a friendly group of quilters and I'm happy I finally got my act together enough to join. Toda...

What a nice surprise to open my email this morning and find a message that I have been awarded the "Kreativ Quilter Award" by Susan at Desert Sky Quilts for my blog! Sooo exciting and such an honor! Please check out Susan's Desert Sky Quilts blog here. The rules of the award are: 1. The winner may put the logo on her blog. 2. Put a link to the person you got the award from in your blog. 3. Nominate 5 blogs. 4. Put links to the blogs. 5. Leave a message for your nominees. I read so many blogs and they are all creative so it was a tough choice for me to narrow it down to only 5. I finally narrowed it down to 5 blogs from artists who inspire me in some way and who haven't received this award before. 1. The Quilt Rambler - Karen Overton from Texas is a longarm quilter and teacher who has been displaced by Hurricane Ike. She inspires me with her creative quilting, love of purple, and her love of God. And not to mention her cute puppy, Pixie :D 2. Exuberant Color - Wanda S....

Grand Canyon III. This is from a view of the canyon from the south rim. Vermillion Cliffs II. This is just a slightly different view of the the same cliffs as the Vermillion Cliffs from the last post. The remnants of Ike have passed through our area and the weather has turned cool and cloudy although it is supposed to warm up into the 70's again tomorrow. I hope it does since we have 5 butterflies to release. My daughter Sarah and I have been studying butterflies in school and we have raised 5 Painted Lady butterflies from the caterpillar stage. They just broke free of their chrysalises this weekend. We've had a lot of fun with this project,'s but now its time to release them. Sarah is sad about that :( We found out today in church that one of our families has a daughter in Texas who has lost her house due to flooding from Ike. I know she is one of thousands who are in the same situation, but she also lost her home due to Rita and just finished rebuilding a year ago. ...

Beach of My Imagination. Bryce Canyon Vermillion Cliffs This is what I have been doing this weekend - glue basting quilt tops. These are all waiting for hand applique and thread painting, then quilting and binding. I like to have several tops to hand applique all at the same time. Right now I have 8, so it looks like I've got plenty to hand applique and keep myself busy. Susan

Grand Canyon I Grand Canyon II Grand Canyon III Here are my three Grand Canyon quilts. The one on the top is my first attempt - the one I didn't like. I decided not to take it apart, but to leave it as is and try again. The Grand Canyon II is my second attempt. I chose almost all different hues and values throughout the quilt after studying the photograph some more. But, I didn't like how the center area of the quilt came out - the values of the fabrics were too much the same color and texture. This time I just took out 2 pieces and replaced them, basically changing the location of one fabric and adding a lighter value to the other. You may also notice that there are more pieces to the 2nd and 3rd quilts. I decided after studying the photo, that there needed to be more detail left in. It was also an opportunity to separate the colors of the tops of the mesas. The shrubs that are in the foreground of the photo will be added either with thread painting or with more fabric with th...

We are expecting the outflow from Ike in a few days. It amazes me that these storms can be so strong as to affect the central part of the U.S. Today it is raining - a pre-effect of Ike. Ike is pushing warm tropical air up to central Missouri and after Ike makes landfall, he is supposed to head our way. We once again have flood warnings out for this weekend what with the rain pre-Ike and post-Ike. My fellow longarm quilter, Karen http://quiltsnkaboodle.blogspot.com/ who lives on the gulf coast of Texas is battening down the hatches in preparation of the hurricane. I'm hoping and praying that there isn't too much damage and no loss of life from this storm. I haven't mana ged to do anything further to my Grand Canyon Quilt. It's still pinned to my Mystery Woman quilt that hangs in my dinning room. All during mealtimes I look at that quilt and try to decide what to do with it. I think I'll take it down tonight and start taking it apart and audition some different fabri...

I've been working on a landscape quilt of the Grand Canyon. Here's the photo inspiration. It's taken from the north rim of the Grand Canyon back in 2006. Here's the freezer paper pattern I drew from the photo. I have the original design drawn on paper first and then I transfer that to the freezer paper. These are the fabrics I selected, trimmed down to a more manageable size. I numbered these pieces with stickers to keep myself organized. I trim off the freezer paper templates one at a time. This also helps me keep things in order and I don't lose pieces this way. Here I've trimmed off template #1. The fabric behind the template isn't the fabric for this piece - I just needed something under the template to keep the glare from the flash off the photo. All the templates are ironed onto the fabrics. The templates are all glue-basted together. This is a photo of the back of the quilt. This is the front of the quilt after the freezer ...

This has been another busy weekend. Friday was our 26th wedding anniversary! It's hard to believe we've been married that long, but according the the calendar, we have. Since we moved here a year ago we only have a few friends who we feel comfortable enough to ask to babysit for us and they were all working at our church helping with the photographers who were taking family photos for a new church directory. So we took the girls with us out to dinner after we had our family photo taken. We took the girls out with us last year too as we had only been in town 3 weeks on our 25th anniversary. I keep talking about going on a cruise for our anniversary one year, but that has never happened. What with adopting a child every 7-8 years of our married life, there is never the time or the money to do something that extravagant. Maybe one day. Saturday there was a craft festival at the fairgrounds so we loaded up the girls and spent several hours gazing at all the fun crafts and weaving o...

The new quilt hanger is dry and I switched it out for the hanger in my daughter, Hannah's quilt. I've taken a picture of both hangers together to show the contrast between the 2. I think I like the painted dowel the best. It could use another coat of paint and a coat of sealer, then it's done. I think I'll be doing a lot of painting today! Hurricane Gustav has decided to hang around mid-Missouri again today and has decided to be a more constant presence. Yesterday it rained lightly and at intermittent intervals. Today it is heavy rain and constant. We may just get the flooding that has been predicted. So it is a dreary day around here today. Sarah loves to be outside more than anything and she was really disappointed to see the rain when she got up this morning. "We aren't going to have any fun", she says. ;) I'll have to come up with something fun for her to do with her school work since a nature walk is definately out of the questio...

Here's an updated photo of the quilt hanger. I was playing around with more beads and decided to add 2 more beads to one side. I believe these are called rice beads. They are made of wood like the beads I added to cap the ends of the dowel. I also got out a bottle of acrylic paint this evening and decided to paint the dowel on one of the hangers that I haven't used yet. I like it better than the raw wood. Once it dries I'll hang a quilt on it and photograph it. I'm still working on the polymer bead idea, but I need to purchase some more clay before I can try out that idea. I thought I had a couple of colors in my craft cart, but it looks like some little hands have gotten ahold of it and taken off with it - who knows where! I'm just hoping I don't find it ground into my carpet somewhere! I haven't found any glass beads with large enough holes to handle the dowels. Besides, I don't know if there is a way to glue glass to wood sucessfully. Anyway, I sti...